The article rightly points out the industrial impact of more powerful and compact lasers but I cannot wait for those PCSELs to reach the small workshop market. Having a cheap laser able to cut metal at home / small shops would be so useful (And sneakily dangerous as lasers are).
A more powerful laser is only half of the equation for cutting metal effectively.
The laser only melts the metal, it doesn't move it out of the cut, and some metals can react in plain air to sputter back at the emitter optics. Gas is forced under pressure at the cut to clear it. With some metals and/or thinner (speaking from a commercial perspective) stock, you can get away with plain air at high volumes of normal air compressor pressures with good results if it's very clean and dry. Others require specifically reactive or nonreactive gases or blends of gases. That's true for most hot cutting processes though. Plasma usually consumes plain air to blow out the cut, oxy-fuel uses excess oxygen to reactively blow out the cut. Lasers with their extremely narrow kerf are more finicky, which can mean a surprisingly high consumables cost.
More powerful lasers also require the optical hardware to operate in a light vacuum. Plasma generated by dust and air itself will ablate expensive parts. Home shops shouldn't need that much power though. If you're cutting thick or difficult metals regularly, that's not a hobby any more.
Then there's the byproducts. Organics get blasted into all kinds of random organic-ish things that aren't great to ingest or emit at ground level near neighbors (PSA, this is true for current hobby lasers). Cutting metals can get really exciting if you don't clean often and thoroughly enough to prevent a critical mass of finely powdered byproducts. An iron or aluminum fire will wreck your laser. An iron and aluminum fire will wreck your laser, and whatever it's sitting on, and the concrete below that.
Indeed, I feel less worried about my 50w solid state laser cutting head from China than I would a 5w laser pointer, as the 50w laser head has a 5mm focal distance and the head has a 50mm square housing, so it mostly obscures what it is lasing and it defocuses quickly.
The quality of the cuts out of a plasma cutter are not great. I always have to spend some time cleaning them up after the fact. I'd hope laser cut parts are much better.
I have a CNC plasma cutter which I use for making robots, and have also worked with laser cut metal. The laser cutter is so, so much more precise. On the plasma I cut some gear teeth with 5mm pitch and they’re okay for a coarse positioning system that doesn’t rotate continuously. On a laser you could cleanly cut 1mm pitch gears for continuous rotation I would think.
Keep in mind that is the constant (average) power. Assuming this is a Q-switched laser with ~10 ns pulse duration, peak power is ~70 kW. (Kind of low as far as lasers go these days, but it's just a laser marker)
I've experimented with using a 60 W (I think*) laser on a small steel bracket, and even with the beam holding on a single point for a minute, it made a barely visible dot that you couldn't feel by running your finger over.
* It was nearly a decade ago, but I looked up the relevant hacker space and unless they changed the model, it was 60 watts.
The bracket was around 1cm by 5cm, and around 1mm thick.
A 60W CO2 laser won't touch steel (or even paper thin aluminum foil), while a 10W diode can cut through it. The type/wavelength of laser matters greatly.
60w back then would be a CO2 LASER - that's 10600nm and that basically bounces off any non-oxidized metal.
The fiber marking LASERs at work are 1064nm, and at a mere 20w output, will absolutely eat away at steel with no problems.
Edit: I should note there are CO2 metal cutting LASERs, but they are at very, very high output powers to overcome that reflectivity barrier. You need 500w 10600nm to cut through what a 30w 1064nm could cut. My 80w CO2 barely cuts through heavy-duty aluminum foil, and in many spots it isn't a full cut. A 20w marking LASER at 1064 would obliterate the foil.
I'm sorry, but there's no way around it, with 5W you can cut metal just as easily as you can cut a tree with a knife. At least with contemporary technology (In the future who knows).
There are abundant portable galvo head lasers out there. A lot of them targeting the hobby market, but also more powerful ones (that are less cheap) meant for marking or engraving parts in situ.
Everlast now has a laser welder, too.
I think it’s only a matter of time before we get cheaper cutter in the 1kw range.
On that note, did anyone ever make a handheld inkjet or spray nozzle, so you could print graffiti on walls or things on the go? I imagine most of the tech in it would be the same as in the kind of laser device you're asking about.
At the moment, there are expensive-but-affordable home CNC laser cutters, typically for a small number of thousand EUR/USD. The more powerful ones can do a very neat job cutting (up to a few mm of) plywood. There are also CNC plasma cutters, which do a good but slightly rough job of cutting sheet metal, and are relatuvely large and complex beasts. I guess a highly-powerful laser, of the type envisioned, would offer the best of all worlds: relatively neat and quick cutting of all materials on the same compact machine.
They might also replace handheld plasma cutters (and welders?) too.
Diode based lasers have driven the cost to laser cut plywood down to affordable levels (~$200 for a creality/comgrow/chinabrand 5w laser). I just bought two of them off ebay as "customer returned" for $75 dollars a piece. they work great on the 1/8in plywood and 3/8in foam i've been cutting. Haven't tried 1/4in ply yet but I bet going slower or multi pass and it will do it.
Edit: It easily cut 1/4 ply (used 2 passes, but judging by the burn marks behind it I only need one). And that's without air assist to clear to the smoke which would help it cut deeper.
These are typically called "laser engraver" when you search for them but they advertise cutting features and cut well. 99% of them have a 5w laser diode, there are 10w and 20w models which just combine several 5w diodes somehow. Each one seems to double the price.
Searching for Comgrow, Creality Falcon, Atomstack, or Sculpfun laser engraver will get you pretty far.
Edit: I should add the more dishonest chinese sellers will advertise "20w or 40w laser engraver" and what they mean is the entire machine consumes 40w with a 5w optical output. Dont be fooled.
To my knowledge, you can't really use a laser cutter interchangeably on different materials. Metal cutting is done with fiber lasers, which have very small beam sizes and have a wavelength of about 1 micrometer. However, you can't use them reliably to cut wood, because they penetrate much deeper into it and can burn material below the surface before the surface has vaporized. It also is highly variable in how much gets absorbed, so engraving does not produce consistent results either.
On the other hand, wood cutting is done with CO2 lasers which have a significantly longer wavelength of around 10 micrometers. This wavelength is absorbed very well by wood and most plastics, but is mostly reflected by metals. Additionally, the longer wavelength means that it cannot be focused to as small of a point, which reduces the maximum power.
Chip lasers would still be bound to the same wavelength limitations, so you couldn't cut both materials with the same laser. What you could do, though, is have a machine with two lasers - especially if they are very compact - and select which one to use depending on what material needs to be cut.
Bit of a tangent, but you might have better luck with hardwood vs. plywood. The glue in plywood makes it more difficult for CO2 lasers to cut through. I was super surprised when someone at work mentioned they were able to blow through some hardwood in a single pass but had a struggle to get through plywood.
Yeah, my larger point is that there are already plenty of ways to cut metal in a home workshop.
I don't see how a laser would be an improvement on any of those, unless the goal is to CNC with extremely tight tolerances, but even then... it seems unlikely that you'll be CNCing blocks of metal, more likely just 2D cuts from sheets of metal, which is pretty limiting.
It would certainly be fun for some stuff, but I think the danger level of a super high power laser detracts from the fun.
More powerful cutting lasers would definitely be great for industrial use cases.
I use a 120W laser cutter for practical, precise, CNC projects all the time. I use a lot of 1/4" acrylic because it's a good material for this class of machine, but it's not the best option, structurally. If I could do the same with 1/8" or 1/16" steel, I would likely switch to that for almost every project.
I love the idea of using a mill/router instead, but IMO the more complicated process is fundamentally more dangerous. If a reflected beam can conceivably pierce the enclosure though, hmmm...
The precision of a laser cutter would open up a lot of possibilities. Particularly making things that slot together with tabs - like fabbing my own welding squares and fixtures where a cnc plasma cutter would leave too rough an edge to have them slot together accurately.
You can't cut sharp inside corners using a cnc mill (round bits), as one would want for tabbed fixtures.
Most sheet good are too large to be placed on or moved around by a cnc mill table.
CNC milling is a slow process (unless you can drop six figures on one).
CNC mills take a lot longer to setup and program, and also require more skill to have a successful result (no chatter, not breaking bits, ramping into the cut on interior features).
Good CNC mills that can handle steel are massively heavy and large machines which makes transport and setup difficult for the home machinist.
Yes, for relatively cheaply. I’m not talking about a 5-axis CNC mill, and I’m not saying it’ll be fast. But a laser cutter is not fast either, and even if lasers get more powerful… a really powerful one is unlikely to be “cheap”.
Of course it depends on what you're doing, and what you're comparing to, but in my experience, laser cutting is the fastest option for hobby-level fabrication.
Even though it's cheap, the cuts still look pretty smooth and precise. I can't speak to the safety, as I would hope a $10k CNC would have more safety features.
Okay, but if you’re expecting a magical new diode laser to cut steel any time soon… good luck. That’s what most of this discussion is about. I think starting with a cheap CNC is more likely to work out.
The article literally has a video of the laser actually cutting stainless steel (aka the Devil's chewing gum). The title says "melt steel". That was the practically the whole point of making these kinds of laser.
Actually, wow... the plot thickens. I missed this in my initial read of the article:
> We even used it to cut through steel. As the bright, beautiful beam carved a disc out of a metal plate 100 μm thick, our entire lab huddled around, watching in amazement.
So... it can cut steel! As long as the steel is 100 μm thick. I think that is literally about the thickness of a piece of paper.
This newfound information does not weaken my skepticism about the hobbyist laser mill that can cut through (useful) pieces of steel coming to a garage near you any time soon, unfortunately.
Yes... but you can't buy it. It's in a research lab. And even once it goes into production, what are the odds that it's going to be affordable? They can probably sell every laser they can produce at a very high price for a long time before supply catches up to demand, even though this is supposed to be easy to manufacture.
I'm just extremely skeptical of a steel-cutting laser mill being cheaper than a $10k CNC any time soon. Hardware is hard. Semiconductors are even harder.
As far as I can see, the article provides no indication of when they even hope to bring this product to market, which is never a good sign.
And really, that video is unsatisfying. They show a mark on the steel, but -- as far as I saw -- they never even show any steel piece that was cut out by the laser. Maybe the steel melts at the very surface... but it may not be possible to cut through a piece of steel unless it is thinner than a piece of paper? We have so little real world information on this laser.
Yes, and a laser cutter is also a completely different process for completely different things... yet you can still do some of the same things, and a CNC mill would be more appropriate for smooth cuts than a CNC plasma cutter.
You're right that such things already exist; I think it would offer two incremental improvements:
* for wood, faster and/or thicker cutting, vs. existing CNC laser cutters
* for sheet metal, neater/cleaner cutting (i.e. cleaner cuts, higher tolerances, less subsequent prep-work needed) perhaps in a smaller neater machine, vs. existing CNC plasma cutters.
Especially within the context of a CNC machine, I wouldn't be overly concerned about safety - all of the more powerful CNC laser cutters I'm aware of already come with an exclosure - both for laser safety, and to constrain smoke (before it's vented safely).
Not Poster, but commercially-available solid state lasers top out at a few tens of watts and due to limited wavelengths have restricted usage on certain materials (eg. even different colours of the same type of plastic may or may not cut, well or at all). I know I've a machine in mind that would be great to make if the available diode lasers were able to cut a wider range of materials, never mind metals.
If it can cut metal, it'd probably not suffer much in the way of limitations on other materials... .
I found a 5W CNC laser on sale for a little over $100. It's really fun and useful to cut things out of 2mm wood. Like the sibling says, having the metal cutting version of this at home would be amazing. I have access to one at a shop in the local university that can cut 4-5mm metal - thick enough for a lot of applications.
I have worked with several nicer fully enclosed models that do not have any monitoring camera. I have a similar model to this one with no such camera, and I suspect this one does not have one either:
Combine these with hydrogen-boron (aneutronic) fusion and we may be able to generate electricity directly without needing a thermal plant. Even though we are years away it still shows a possible path forwards. Here's hoping!
Wikipedia says "... a petawatt-scale laser pulse could launch an 'avalanche' fusion reaction." Quite a lot of zeros to add on to the power.
The article says they are planning 10kW or 10^4W and a petawatt is 10^15W so 11 zeros by my calculation. Could be a while. I think Helion, who are now talking about turning on their fusion to electricity gizmo this summer, may get there first.
The article confuses things by comparing PCSELs to edge-emitting lasers, when it appears to be a new refinement on VCSELs, which have been generating large power densities since around the turn of the century.
I wonder if the surface emitting nature of these will make it easier to phase lock multiple chips. This could be very useful for large apertures and power beaming over long distances.
One application for high efficiency large aperture lasers is powering long distance aircraft, either by beaming from ground stations along the way or from laser stations in space. The ability to forego fuel entirely would be quite attractive, allowing potentially unlimited range.
Another use for that is holography. If you can make a wafer-scale array of phase locked emitters overlayed with the ability to either attenuate or phase-shift each one, it becomes a nice (one color) holographic display. I'm assuming high divergence from each one.
This reminds me of the latest ASML machines coordinating UV laser (angle) and diffraction grating to achieve clean small 2D patterns.
I'm curious how hard it is to model light interactions on this scale. What does it take for the authors to come up with modeling solutions for their scaling problems? Is this something one PhD in light physics could do, or do companies and people develop expertise in teams over decades?
It seems like ASML only requires the solution to one wave diffraction interaction (with the mask), but modeling the standing wave and higher-order modes would require much more mathematics. Is it even possible if the solutions for each interaction are probabilistic?
Also, are solutions in practice mostly bounded by the kinds of semiconductor features (holes) they can build?
Yes, there are such printers in existence already --- they either use a laser to melt a layer of metal powder, or spray a binding agent on a layer of plastic powder --- for the latter it's possible to include a colouring agent and get full-colour 3D plastic prints.
Search term is "Laser powder bed fusion" (as opposed to the trademark: "Direct Metal Laser Sintering" as was pointed out below)
This article on society 5.0 doesn't mention lasers. Anyone have info on why ultra-powerful lasers are critical to specifically this plan for the future?
it mentions the following list of priorities for the plan, and with a bit of creativity it is possible to imagine ways how cheap, powerful, compact lasers could benefit each of them in turn. Probably, and more mundanely, the researchers are doing their best to justify their research grants by connecting the outcomes to the political priorities of the day.
"Hence, Japan will consolidate the following fundamental technologies in particular, which function as core technologies in the real world, for new value creation in individual systems.
- Robotics: technology expected to be used in various fields such as communication, social service/work assistance, and manufacturing
- Sensor technology: technology that collects information from humans and all kinds of “things”
- Actuator technology: technology related to activating mechanism, drive, and control devices in the real world, as well as the results of information processing and analysis obtained in cyberspace
- Biotechnology: technology transforming sensor and actuator technologies
- Human interface technology: technology using augmented reality, affective engineering, neuroscience, etc.
- Material/nanotechnology: technology that leads to differentiated systems through enhanced functionality of various components, such as innovative structural materials and new functional materials
- Light/quantum technology: technology that leads to differentiated systems through enhanced functionality of various components, such as innovative measuring techniques, information/energy transfer technology, and processing technology."
A society in which "the average car-buyer" has a tiny portable steel-melting laser is a society where I'm wearing welding goggles every time I leave the house. And I'm not sure how you even lock a bike or a door or a safe any more.
There are already so many ways to defeat locks, that locks are just there to keep honest people honest and to slow down criminals.
The laser in the article took 30 seconds to cut a a tiny disc out of a sheet of steel 100 micrometers thick. That isn’t going to change things on the theft front. There are much more effective methods available today.
> There are already so many ways to defeat locks, that locks are just there to keep honest people honest and to slow down criminals.
If you live at a lower end apartment complex, you might be shocked at how many doors your key will unlock, if you apply a light turning pressure and thrust the key in and out a few times.
I know I was. But it came in handy when one of my xmas gifts had been delivered to the front office, and I needed to pick it up after hours in order to make a redeye flight the next morning. I just used my own room key to open the office (setting off the alarm!), grabbed the package with my name on it, and closed and relocked the door and was gone before anyone investigated.
Yeah, that's exactly it- but the point is I was using an unmodified key.
I've tried this on higher-end tumblers and I could really feel that it wasn't going to work. It's just about the el-cheapo builder-grade locks (which comprise a shocking percentage of home and apartment locks).
A dutch women told me once a story, where she but a used bike in Amsterdam and the heroin addict who sold it to her, threaten her to steal it again, if she does not use a heavy lock.
When I moved to the Netherlands my boss told me to never spend more than 20 euro on a bike because it will get stolen. I didn't listen, and lo and behold two weeks in my 75 euro bike and the 35 euro heavy duty lock disappeared
I've never done it, but you buy it from the thief (junkie) directly. So it could be that you find them by word of mouth, like you would use to buy drugs when they were illegal. But you can also buy a second hand bike very cheaply, some are even free (just an example: https://www.marktplaats.nl/v/fietsen-en-brommers/fietsen-her...). New bikes are usually more than 200 euros, dutch brands are 500 euros and up
It seems like that that point the bike thieves are just a bike rental company.
You get the bike for < 20 Euro and then, presumably, at some point in the future it gets stolen again, but you already got 20 Euros worth of use out of it.
This was 2010-ish and I found one on Marktplaats. Might be going for 40 or 50 now with inflation. People selling them on the street also had for cheap, but these were most definitely stolen.
The Netherlands famously has more bicycle thefts per year than citizens. At this point you could almost think of cheap commuter bikes as public property.
People in countries where bicycling is not seen as a personality statement generally ride very cheap city bikes around town. Last time I bought one of those in college it cost about 30eur. Is not like in SF where people ride 3000 dollar bikes to work because omg you’re a cyclist now and this is your whole identity.
Here in the part of Canada I live in, you see some of the $3000 bike identity stuff, but most people ride something in the $500–$750 range. Something practical, comfortable, reliable, etc.
There is also a growing segment of people who use $5,000–$15,000 cargo/kid carrier bikes as replacements for their cars, which is cool. But I do worry about theft of those increasing. Right now I rarely hear of it, but it seems likely to increase. Even the motors and batteries in them cost thousands alone.
I don't know why you would link a video instead of saying the sentence "chain locks are hard to cut with an angle grinder because the chains are hard to hold steady"
Pfft. I had a medium-grade bike lock in college, and I once accidentally stole a bike because somebody with the same color/model/lock parked in front of the same building as me. My key was a bit stiff and I kind of had to force it, but it worked fine. I just remember thinking "why does this seat feel different?" Took me a couple of days to figure it out. I put it back- sure hope the original owner came and looked again after his initial disappointment that day.
> There are already so many ways to defeat locks, that locks are just there to keep honest people honest and to slow down criminals.
Yeah, I'm currently waiting on parts to replace my door handle. As far as I can tell, the would-be thieves snapped off the handle to make an opening, and used that to cut/snap the rear part of the lock (which normally can't turn because of the lock cylinder) and then substituted in a screwdriver to convince the car that the lock had turned.
Thankfully--and puzzlingly--they were unprepared for the steering-wheel lock and only managed to mangle and bend it (probably with a small bolt-cutter) before they gave up or were spooked off.
'Course, after that they would have still been unable to start the car for other reasons, but it still saved me the cost of fixing a torn-up ignition.
Because of this Switzerland has outlawed portable laser pointers higher than the lowest class.
Anything more powerful than a low end projector pointer is now classified as a weapon and regulated as such.
This at least keeps these units out of the hands of the general public and those that can't use them responsibly.
It sucks for those of us who used them responsibly just like we did with RC aircraft before drones became an item on a discount shelve. However at least I know that if I go to a large event or even a demo I won't be permanently blinded by some idiot.
Same in Norway, in 2015. Anything above 1mW is forbidden in practice although the law leaves the actual limit and exceptions to the regulating authority.
What keeps someone from driving across the border to acquire one, or ordering on ebay, or getting one at a sketchy shop? "Some idiot" is exactly the kind of person that would ignore the law.
I mean it seems like a fine law, but it's a law so now I never have to think about it again seems strange to me. Running stop signs is outlawed but I still look before I cross the street.
It doesn't stop anyone. But packages are randomly checked and so are cars going over the border.
Same goes for guns. Someone can aquire one illegally but fines are high and there is no impulsive purchase at the next Kiosk so circulation is low and you aren't going to get "lasered" by 20+ green lasers at some event.
An Apple-specific magazine in Brazil made a contest to come up with stickers for the back of the first iPhones. My entry was also an anti-theft device, with the image of a Microsoft Zune.
This is something that makes me nervous any time I see YouTube videos about these sorts of lasers. They can blind someone nearly instantly, silently, and invisibly from a quarter mile away. That's terrifying.
(Cost plus a $30-$80 battery, of course, but after you pick your color, you've already got batteries). Your locks are far more protected by the social contract that would compel a stranger to stop someone who was cutting a bike lock with an angle grinder, and would cause a thief to fear arrest, prosecution, and jail time, than by actual physical security.
If you want a laser, you can already get a 100W CO2 laser tube for $500:
It won't do a great job of cutting steel - it will engrave it, but to cut steel you'd need O2 assist gas and a lot more power. It will trivially cut ABS, foam, fabric, wood veneer/thin plywood, cardstock, etc. if attached to a pair of mirrors on an XY stage such as might be borrowed/scaled up from a 3D printer. And, of course, it will trivially scar corneas with the invisible danger of its 10,600 nm laser light. Good news, though - ordinary polycarbonate safety glasses are opaque to the extreme IR light.
Laser safety is serious business, but highly-collimated, tightly-focused laser light is not likely to be produced by a cheap, portable laser. The above tube produces a 100W beam with a diameter of about 8mm. I wouldn't put my eyeball in the path, but a safety shutter can sit in the beam indefinitely and merely get warm. You melt steel by focusing a this 8mm beam down to a infinitesimally tiny spot, and beyond the focal length of your optics it diffuses to something no more dangerous than the source 8mm beam, and beyond that it's no more dangerous than an average lightbulb - albeit one that you have no aversion response/blink reflex to. I always wear my goggles near our cutting lasers, but I know lots of guys who have worked around 20W-20,000W CO2 lasers their entire lives and they're pretty cavalier with regards to laser safety.
Finally, a welding mask is a neutral-density filter, suitable for the (very approximately) black-body radiation produced by a welder, and is much less effective than laser safety goggles at blocking high-intensity light of a very specific color. Depending on the sensor, an auto-darkening mask might not even trigger when exposed to a laser! You'd want a set of 940nm laser safety goggles for this, which is far more exotic and dangerous than a 10um CO2 laser.
Don't cut vinyl with your laser, it will produce chlorine gas which will not be good for you to breathe and will corrode your equipment. Use a dragknife cutter instead.
It does work, and I've got great filtration and ventilation, but yeah, probably not a good idea. Edited. Same caution is true of PVC, which is a shame because it's really convenient for making the aforementioned ventilation systems!
A question I've always had: How do I know if my glasses protect against a particular laser? I'm talking about the ones in hobby CNC machines, laser hair removal places, etc, not high-powered industrial ones, where there's likely a high degree of know-how on safety already?
Best bet is to buy two pairs and stick one in the path of the beam with a sensor or target behind it. Otherwise you're looking up charts for the materials spectral absorption in your lasers emission band
But even if the target isn't cut, that doesn't mean I won't get eye damage, does it? Or do glasses protect even if they're only a bit opaque to the target wavelength?
First of all, I take no responsibility for your safety, I'm just some person on a forum.
That being said, it's all a function of how much light enters your eye. You can look up the exposure limits of the human retina for different frequencies of light to get an idea how little is actually required to damage your eye. The target or sensor should be sensitive enough to react to that much incident light. Just putting something behind the glasses and have it not get cut is definitely not enough to indicate no eye damage.
Proper laser goggles come with ratings. Dependent on the laser wavelength, beamsize, energy/power and pulse duration. Most goggle suppliers will tell you what you need if you supply the laser specs.
A long while ago, I was told that the flight deck crew on Air Force One would wear eyepatches during nuclear drills, so that if (hopefully temporarily) blinded by an airborne nuke, would be able to continue flying after switching the eyepatch to the other eye.
Not at all the same risk profile. Arc welding is just a really bright UV light, and without appropriate protection, it will cause what is essentially a sunburn on the surface of the eye. It is painful, but it usually heals in a couple of days. It shouldn't significantly damage the retina.
Laser light is different: a laser is effectively a point light source, and it will focus inside the eye to a single point with enough brightness to cause a burn. It can cause a permanent blind spot, and damage may happen faster and be less noticeable at first.
> A society in which "the average car-buyer" has a tiny portable steel-melting laser is a society where I'm wearing welding goggles every time I leave the house.
VR-headset will be better, because it can attune brightness and contrast so you can see even at dusk.
A BB gun has to be used very intentionally to hurt your eyes. A high-powered laser could blind you because your neighbor is doing some work on his shed and you caught a reflection
BB gun — that's as in "ball bearing" — also known as "airsoft".
In this example, crossfire would require someone to walk into an airsoft combat area without any eye protection and for someone in that game to not realise and shoot them anyway. In the face.
Stray BB bullets don't go very far. They're not rifled, and they have fairly low muzzle energy compared to real weapons — I've shot myself with one at zero range, and even on bare skin it stings rather than penetrates.
A bb gun and an airsoft gun are very different things to me. A bb gun shoots metal balls and airsoft shoots plastic. I would not want to be hit by a bb gun, but an airsoft gun is no big deal (though the snipers can definitely hurt).
Diffuse reflection is only dangerous up to a few feet away. You're neighbor would have to be deliberately aiming the beam at your eye to blind you assuming you're not in the shed with them.
When small organisations get nuclear explosives, the only two safe options are:
1. Spending your life in a nuclear bunker and only interacting via the internet — including pure VR and/or remote controlled robot bodies.
2. Let your government poke around everywhere to make sure nobody is making (or importing) their own nukes, regardless of what anyone says about the 2nd amendment.
This is a terrifying prospect indeed, especially being located in the Netherlands, plenty bikes are getting stolen left and right already.
But I guess this is inevitable, so we'll just have to devise better solutions than the simple locks which in their working principles have not changed in the past 100+ years.
Great market opportunity around the corner I suppose.
Yes, but the average bike thief is looking for an easy steal and will avoid wasting time on a locked bike. Bikes in the Netherlands usually have 2 locks (a wheel lock and an extra chain), so thieves will usually move on from those first. A portable laser might allow a thief to steal even previously safer bikes just because it makes it quicker and silent (I'm assuming both).
It won’t be quicker. The laser in the demonstration was cutting through 100 micrometers of steel.
Cutting through a chain is going to take much much longer. There are already quicker methods to cut or break bike chains and disable locks.
Also cutting with a laser requires very precise alignment with respect to distance. You won’t be free handing this. You’d need to mount it on a device capable of precisely adjusting the distance as you cut deeper into the metal.
Plus it’s relatively easy to engineer laser resistant materials.
Probably not. Heating steel doesn't cut it, it just forms a puddle of molten metal that will cling to the base material. For cutting to work, you need to blow it off somehow.
For plasma and oxy-fuel cutting, the hot gases coming out the nozzle acts as the mass that blows it off. Air carbon arc gouging uses regular compressed air to push the molten material away. I imagine industrial laser cuttings dealing with anything larger then a few millimetres thick would use compressed air as well.
I doubt a smaller more efficient laser is going to change that reality.
It is an interesting problem since the existence of one cutter forces on offense forces all defenders to make substantial changes. I suspect the most expedient way will be to semi-criminalize carry of the devices, similar to spray paint in some places.
Laser handguns are probably never going to be a thing. How many places are there on a human body where a cauterized hole a few mm across will kill or incapacitate someone? How likely is someone going to be to hit those places accurately with a pistol?
There are some interesting niche uses for laser sniper carbines[1], IMO, like punching holes in a gas tank and igniting the vapour, burning out security camera sensors, cutting power/communications lines, starting fires inside distant buildings by firing through windows, etc., but I think most useful laser weapons will be mounted and computer-controlled so that they can track moving targets long enough to do meaningful damage.
you’re not thinking creatively enough. a mm-sized hole may not incapacitate someone but a mm-thick slice across their belly would disembowel them. just wave it around!
The article explains that it has potential for welding and other commercial applications but it's not quite there yet. It did cut through 100um steel. It's a good read.
What does that have to do with "shrinking thing on silicon wafers" ? This isn't really even new technology. Welding and cutting lasers have been around for a while. Do you think that cutting steel and making CPUs is the same process or that making smaller transistors just needs more power in the laser?
Tl;dr from the article is that a chip or array of chips can soon replace a refrigerator-sized CO2 laser. They went from 1W to 50W in about 10 years, and have a path to kW scale which could replace those large industrial CO2 lasers with something much much smaller.
Some googling confirmed that Moore wrote about component density, not specifically transistors. That confirms my hunch. An increasingly higher output laser on silicon fits the same pattern of exponential growth.
Hope that helps you understand where I was coming from. As a layperson it seems like exciting science with lots of commercial and scientific applications (that are also described in the article).
> Gordon Moore’s famous article is published in Electronics magazine. In the article, Moore predicts an annual doubling of component density on an integrated circuit at minimum manufacturing costs. Moore later identified “a component” as “transistor, resistor, diode or capacitor.”
Neat! That looks like it's weithin an order of magnitude or two of becoming a real ray gun. I hope I can snatch up a few when they hit the consumer market before imdiatly getting banned.
All the handwringing about how horrible bad things will happen when these lasers are out there.....can we please just have a nice, happy, optimistic article about the great future which awaits us??
The article rightly points out the industrial impact of more powerful and compact lasers but I cannot wait for those PCSELs to reach the small workshop market. Having a cheap laser able to cut metal at home / small shops would be so useful (And sneakily dangerous as lasers are).
A more powerful laser is only half of the equation for cutting metal effectively.
The laser only melts the metal, it doesn't move it out of the cut, and some metals can react in plain air to sputter back at the emitter optics. Gas is forced under pressure at the cut to clear it. With some metals and/or thinner (speaking from a commercial perspective) stock, you can get away with plain air at high volumes of normal air compressor pressures with good results if it's very clean and dry. Others require specifically reactive or nonreactive gases or blends of gases. That's true for most hot cutting processes though. Plasma usually consumes plain air to blow out the cut, oxy-fuel uses excess oxygen to reactively blow out the cut. Lasers with their extremely narrow kerf are more finicky, which can mean a surprisingly high consumables cost.
More powerful lasers also require the optical hardware to operate in a light vacuum. Plasma generated by dust and air itself will ablate expensive parts. Home shops shouldn't need that much power though. If you're cutting thick or difficult metals regularly, that's not a hobby any more.
Then there's the byproducts. Organics get blasted into all kinds of random organic-ish things that aren't great to ingest or emit at ground level near neighbors (PSA, this is true for current hobby lasers). Cutting metals can get really exciting if you don't clean often and thoroughly enough to prevent a critical mass of finely powdered byproducts. An iron or aluminum fire will wreck your laser. An iron and aluminum fire will wreck your laser, and whatever it's sitting on, and the concrete below that.
>> (And sneakily dangerous as lasers are)
These seem safer. With a wide emission area and focusing lens, a reflected beam will weaken with distance.
Indeed, I feel less worried about my 50w solid state laser cutting head from China than I would a 5w laser pointer, as the 50w laser head has a 5mm focal distance and the head has a 50mm square housing, so it mostly obscures what it is lasing and it defocuses quickly.
> Having a cheap laser able to cut metal at home / small shops would be so useful (And sneakily dangerous as lasers are).
So, please do not come around these lasers with remaining eye unprotected.
I think one should work with these things only using some cameras and never directly.
Given how quickly dangerous these compact lasers can be, I think I'd rather stick with the handheld plasma cutter.
The quality of the cuts out of a plasma cutter are not great. I always have to spend some time cleaning them up after the fact. I'd hope laser cut parts are much better.
Given large scale laser cuts I've seen - they require less cleanup, but still some. You spatter molten metal everywhere.
I have a CNC plasma cutter which I use for making robots, and have also worked with laser cut metal. The laser cutter is so, so much more precise. On the plasma I cut some gear teeth with 5mm pitch and they’re okay for a coarse positioning system that doesn’t rotate continuously. On a laser you could cleanly cut 1mm pitch gears for continuous rotation I would think.
Oh, absolutely! I was more speaking to the clean up. Lasers are a big step up.
If I'm doing handheld cuts I'm not holding out that much hope for precision anyway.
I shudder at the thought of these kinda of lasers reaching the hands of those involved in street crime.
You can already blind people with cheap laser pointers. This isn't a new danger.
Honestly I'm kinda surprised there aren't handheld laser engraving devices made for quick and permanent graffiti.
These do exist, here's one I saw recently: https://www.laserpwr.net/hand-held-laser/hand-held-laser-2.h...
30W? That's a pretty powerful laser. A 1W laser can set stuff on fire. A 5W laser can cut steel.
Keep in mind that is the constant (average) power. Assuming this is a Q-switched laser with ~10 ns pulse duration, peak power is ~70 kW. (Kind of low as far as lasers go these days, but it's just a laser marker)
Are Q-switched / pulsed lasers common in industrial applications?
Answering generally I would say yes, they are one of the common types of lasers that could be chosen depending on the application
> A 5W laser can cut steel
I've experimented with using a 60 W (I think*) laser on a small steel bracket, and even with the beam holding on a single point for a minute, it made a barely visible dot that you couldn't feel by running your finger over.
* It was nearly a decade ago, but I looked up the relevant hacker space and unless they changed the model, it was 60 watts.
The bracket was around 1cm by 5cm, and around 1mm thick.
A 60W CO2 laser won't touch steel (or even paper thin aluminum foil), while a 10W diode can cut through it. The type/wavelength of laser matters greatly.
60w back then would be a CO2 LASER - that's 10600nm and that basically bounces off any non-oxidized metal.
The fiber marking LASERs at work are 1064nm, and at a mere 20w output, will absolutely eat away at steel with no problems.
Edit: I should note there are CO2 metal cutting LASERs, but they are at very, very high output powers to overcome that reflectivity barrier. You need 500w 10600nm to cut through what a 30w 1064nm could cut. My 80w CO2 barely cuts through heavy-duty aluminum foil, and in many spots it isn't a full cut. A 20w marking LASER at 1064 would obliterate the foil.
Fair ‘nuff.
I know that a friend had a 3-5W laser (don’t remember -it was a CO2 laser) he used for wood burning, and it was fast.
It may also be what they measure.
A 5W laser can't cut steel. You need to be in the kilowatts before you can cut metal (unless it is very very very thin).
You may well be correct, and I spoke out of turn, but it is my understanding that the wavelength of the laser can make a huge difference.
Club show lasers of 5W are pretty common.
I'm sorry, but there's no way around it, with 5W you can cut metal just as easily as you can cut a tree with a knife. At least with contemporary technology (In the future who knows).
There are abundant portable galvo head lasers out there. A lot of them targeting the hobby market, but also more powerful ones (that are less cheap) meant for marking or engraving parts in situ.
Everlast now has a laser welder, too.
I think it’s only a matter of time before we get cheaper cutter in the 1kw range.
And cheaper DMLS printers [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxzFzbi0wF4
On that note, did anyone ever make a handheld inkjet or spray nozzle, so you could print graffiti on walls or things on the go? I imagine most of the tech in it would be the same as in the kind of laser device you're asking about.
https://spritesmods.com/?art=magicbrush
the colop e-mark stuff basically puts an inkjet head into a handheld printer https://www.colop.com/de_eur/mobiles-drucken/e-mark
or quick and permanent scar
Can you expand on why you think this would be so great for home workshops? How do you envision using the laser? Handheld, mounted, or on a CNC?
CNC would be an obvious implementation.
At the moment, there are expensive-but-affordable home CNC laser cutters, typically for a small number of thousand EUR/USD. The more powerful ones can do a very neat job cutting (up to a few mm of) plywood. There are also CNC plasma cutters, which do a good but slightly rough job of cutting sheet metal, and are relatuvely large and complex beasts. I guess a highly-powerful laser, of the type envisioned, would offer the best of all worlds: relatively neat and quick cutting of all materials on the same compact machine.
They might also replace handheld plasma cutters (and welders?) too.
Diode based lasers have driven the cost to laser cut plywood down to affordable levels (~$200 for a creality/comgrow/chinabrand 5w laser). I just bought two of them off ebay as "customer returned" for $75 dollars a piece. they work great on the 1/8in plywood and 3/8in foam i've been cutting. Haven't tried 1/4in ply yet but I bet going slower or multi pass and it will do it.
Edit: It easily cut 1/4 ply (used 2 passes, but judging by the burn marks behind it I only need one). And that's without air assist to clear to the smoke which would help it cut deeper.
What is this genre of machine called, just a laser cutter? I would love to play with this
Look for "diode laser cnc". If you search for "laser cutter" or "engraver" the results get mixed in with all kinds of larger machines.
The world of home laser apparati is kinda wild.
These are typically called "laser engraver" when you search for them but they advertise cutting features and cut well. 99% of them have a 5w laser diode, there are 10w and 20w models which just combine several 5w diodes somehow. Each one seems to double the price.
Searching for Comgrow, Creality Falcon, Atomstack, or Sculpfun laser engraver will get you pretty far.
Edit: I should add the more dishonest chinese sellers will advertise "20w or 40w laser engraver" and what they mean is the entire machine consumes 40w with a 5w optical output. Dont be fooled.
Yes, laser cutter/engraver.
To my knowledge, you can't really use a laser cutter interchangeably on different materials. Metal cutting is done with fiber lasers, which have very small beam sizes and have a wavelength of about 1 micrometer. However, you can't use them reliably to cut wood, because they penetrate much deeper into it and can burn material below the surface before the surface has vaporized. It also is highly variable in how much gets absorbed, so engraving does not produce consistent results either.
On the other hand, wood cutting is done with CO2 lasers which have a significantly longer wavelength of around 10 micrometers. This wavelength is absorbed very well by wood and most plastics, but is mostly reflected by metals. Additionally, the longer wavelength means that it cannot be focused to as small of a point, which reduces the maximum power.
Chip lasers would still be bound to the same wavelength limitations, so you couldn't cut both materials with the same laser. What you could do, though, is have a machine with two lasers - especially if they are very compact - and select which one to use depending on what material needs to be cut.
Bit of a tangent, but you might have better luck with hardwood vs. plywood. The glue in plywood makes it more difficult for CO2 lasers to cut through. I was super surprised when someone at work mentioned they were able to blow through some hardwood in a single pass but had a struggle to get through plywood.
Does the heating from the laser cause any softening of the glue/weakening/delamination of the layers?
Some types of glue absorb a lot of the laser energy. There are dedicated plywood optimized for laser cutting https://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=6042
Yeah, my larger point is that there are already plenty of ways to cut metal in a home workshop.
I don't see how a laser would be an improvement on any of those, unless the goal is to CNC with extremely tight tolerances, but even then... it seems unlikely that you'll be CNCing blocks of metal, more likely just 2D cuts from sheets of metal, which is pretty limiting.
It would certainly be fun for some stuff, but I think the danger level of a super high power laser detracts from the fun.
More powerful cutting lasers would definitely be great for industrial use cases.
I use a 120W laser cutter for practical, precise, CNC projects all the time. I use a lot of 1/4" acrylic because it's a good material for this class of machine, but it's not the best option, structurally. If I could do the same with 1/8" or 1/16" steel, I would likely switch to that for almost every project.
I love the idea of using a mill/router instead, but IMO the more complicated process is fundamentally more dangerous. If a reflected beam can conceivably pierce the enclosure though, hmmm...
The precision of a laser cutter would open up a lot of possibilities. Particularly making things that slot together with tabs - like fabbing my own welding squares and fixtures where a cnc plasma cutter would leave too rough an edge to have them slot together accurately.
Can't you buy a CNC mill/router that can cut metal more precisely than a CNC plasma cutter?
You can't cut sharp inside corners using a cnc mill (round bits), as one would want for tabbed fixtures.
Most sheet good are too large to be placed on or moved around by a cnc mill table.
CNC milling is a slow process (unless you can drop six figures on one).
CNC mills take a lot longer to setup and program, and also require more skill to have a successful result (no chatter, not breaking bits, ramping into the cut on interior features).
Good CNC mills that can handle steel are massively heavy and large machines which makes transport and setup difficult for the home machinist.
Not cheaply, which was part of the OP's post.
Yes, for relatively cheaply. I’m not talking about a 5-axis CNC mill, and I’m not saying it’ll be fast. But a laser cutter is not fast either, and even if lasers get more powerful… a really powerful one is unlikely to be “cheap”.
Of course it depends on what you're doing, and what you're comparing to, but in my experience, laser cutting is the fastest option for hobby-level fabrication.
Tormach metal CNCs are $10K+ and take up a lot of floorspace.
A lot of people also cut sheet metal which a CNC tends to be terrible at.
We're talking hobbyist grade stuff here. People mount router bits on $400 CNCs and cut metal all the time.
Not $10k: https://youtu.be/w26DHMccicE?t=637
Even though it's cheap, the cuts still look pretty smooth and precise. I can't speak to the safety, as I would hope a $10k CNC would have more safety features.
They cut aluminum. Generally not well.
This part is actually a typical good result in spite of how bad it is: https://youtu.be/w26DHMccicE?t=731
Deflection is bad. Repeatability is poor. etc.
If you put even mild steel on that, that machine will have no hope.
Okay, but if you’re expecting a magical new diode laser to cut steel any time soon… good luck. That’s what most of this discussion is about. I think starting with a cheap CNC is more likely to work out.
o_O?
The article literally has a video of the laser actually cutting stainless steel (aka the Devil's chewing gum). The title says "melt steel". That was the practically the whole point of making these kinds of laser.
Video link: https://youtu.be/SFXmFNTviRI
Actually, wow... the plot thickens. I missed this in my initial read of the article:
> We even used it to cut through steel. As the bright, beautiful beam carved a disc out of a metal plate 100 μm thick, our entire lab huddled around, watching in amazement.
So... it can cut steel! As long as the steel is 100 μm thick. I think that is literally about the thickness of a piece of paper.
This newfound information does not weaken my skepticism about the hobbyist laser mill that can cut through (useful) pieces of steel coming to a garage near you any time soon, unfortunately.
Yes... but you can't buy it. It's in a research lab. And even once it goes into production, what are the odds that it's going to be affordable? They can probably sell every laser they can produce at a very high price for a long time before supply catches up to demand, even though this is supposed to be easy to manufacture.
I'm just extremely skeptical of a steel-cutting laser mill being cheaper than a $10k CNC any time soon. Hardware is hard. Semiconductors are even harder.
As far as I can see, the article provides no indication of when they even hope to bring this product to market, which is never a good sign.
https://xkcd.com/678/
I would love to be wrong.
And really, that video is unsatisfying. They show a mark on the steel, but -- as far as I saw -- they never even show any steel piece that was cut out by the laser. Maybe the steel melts at the very surface... but it may not be possible to cut through a piece of steel unless it is thinner than a piece of paper? We have so little real world information on this laser.
Completely different processes for completely different things.
Yes, and a laser cutter is also a completely different process for completely different things... yet you can still do some of the same things, and a CNC mill would be more appropriate for smooth cuts than a CNC plasma cutter.
You're right that such things already exist; I think it would offer two incremental improvements:
* for wood, faster and/or thicker cutting, vs. existing CNC laser cutters
* for sheet metal, neater/cleaner cutting (i.e. cleaner cuts, higher tolerances, less subsequent prep-work needed) perhaps in a smaller neater machine, vs. existing CNC plasma cutters.
Especially within the context of a CNC machine, I wouldn't be overly concerned about safety - all of the more powerful CNC laser cutters I'm aware of already come with an exclosure - both for laser safety, and to constrain smoke (before it's vented safely).
Not Poster, but commercially-available solid state lasers top out at a few tens of watts and due to limited wavelengths have restricted usage on certain materials (eg. even different colours of the same type of plastic may or may not cut, well or at all). I know I've a machine in mind that would be great to make if the available diode lasers were able to cut a wider range of materials, never mind metals.
If it can cut metal, it'd probably not suffer much in the way of limitations on other materials... .
I found a 5W CNC laser on sale for a little over $100. It's really fun and useful to cut things out of 2mm wood. Like the sibling says, having the metal cutting version of this at home would be amazing. I have access to one at a shop in the local university that can cut 4-5mm metal - thick enough for a lot of applications.
Aren't such laser cutters in enclosing opaq casing with a operation monitoring camera to avoid accidents?
Plenty are available for sale without the casing, such as this one:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804553731471.html
I have worked with several nicer fully enclosed models that do not have any monitoring camera. I have a similar model to this one with no such camera, and I suspect this one does not have one either:
https://omtechlaser.com/products/60w-co2-laser-engraver-with...
That said if a kilowatt metal cutting laser was for sale, I would suspect it would have a full enclosure at least.
They should be so enclosed, but I doubt they're always so enclosed.
Should be a basic security regulatory constraint for such equipement to be allowed to be sold. If it is not the case, something is wrong somewhere.
These lasers mean that the watches that Q gave to James Bond will finally become a reality.
LLMs and self-driving cars mean that KITT from Knight Rider will finally become a reality.
All I need is for Webb to discover a planet a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, and my childhood fictions will have been realised.
Wouldn't you still need to provide an amount of power to the laser that's not currently feasible for a watch?
Combine these with hydrogen-boron (aneutronic) fusion and we may be able to generate electricity directly without needing a thermal plant. Even though we are years away it still shows a possible path forwards. Here's hoping!
Wikipedia says "... a petawatt-scale laser pulse could launch an 'avalanche' fusion reaction." Quite a lot of zeros to add on to the power.
The article says they are planning 10kW or 10^4W and a petawatt is 10^15W so 11 zeros by my calculation. Could be a while. I think Helion, who are now talking about turning on their fusion to electricity gizmo this summer, may get there first.
> Society 5.0, would see made-on-demand goods
Fans of The Peripheral, I see.
All kidding aside, the sticking point for this, as it already is for high-power LED lighting, is cooling.
It still takes a fairly significant bit of hardware to cool stuff.
The article confuses things by comparing PCSELs to edge-emitting lasers, when it appears to be a new refinement on VCSELs, which have been generating large power densities since around the turn of the century.
I wonder if the surface emitting nature of these will make it easier to phase lock multiple chips. This could be very useful for large apertures and power beaming over long distances.
One application for high efficiency large aperture lasers is powering long distance aircraft, either by beaming from ground stations along the way or from laser stations in space. The ability to forego fuel entirely would be quite attractive, allowing potentially unlimited range.
>> make it easier to phase lock multiple chips
Another use for that is holography. If you can make a wafer-scale array of phase locked emitters overlayed with the ability to either attenuate or phase-shift each one, it becomes a nice (one color) holographic display. I'm assuming high divergence from each one.
Someone should quickly build a light source from multiple phase-locked lasers and call it a "phaser".
Will this mean affordable home laser cutters can finally cut metal in addition to things like wood, leather, and plastic?
This reminds me of the latest ASML machines coordinating UV laser (angle) and diffraction grating to achieve clean small 2D patterns.
I'm curious how hard it is to model light interactions on this scale. What does it take for the authors to come up with modeling solutions for their scaling problems? Is this something one PhD in light physics could do, or do companies and people develop expertise in teams over decades?
It seems like ASML only requires the solution to one wave diffraction interaction (with the mask), but modeling the standing wave and higher-order modes would require much more mathematics. Is it even possible if the solutions for each interaction are probabilistic?
Also, are solutions in practice mostly bounded by the kinds of semiconductor features (holes) they can build?
Can you use this for 3d printin? Like in an array of lasers where every laser is a pixel and you get 3d by shifting a powder layer.
Could this architecture be faster then current 3d printers?
Yes, there are such printers in existence already --- they either use a laser to melt a layer of metal powder, or spray a binding agent on a layer of plastic powder --- for the latter it's possible to include a colouring agent and get full-colour 3D plastic prints.
Search term is "Laser powder bed fusion" (as opposed to the trademark: "Direct Metal Laser Sintering" as was pointed out below)
https://www.3dsourced.com/guides/direct-metal-laser-sinterin...
Laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) is the more standardized term. DMLS was a trademark.
Photopolymer Resin based printing has been around for a while now. Not sure how much the light source matters / can improve the speed though.
Does it mean someone can take such laser and then go slice people in half?
There is focus on the industry, but surely this should be regulated as it seems to be of dual use.
This article on society 5.0 doesn't mention lasers. Anyone have info on why ultra-powerful lasers are critical to specifically this plan for the future?
https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/english/society5_0/index.html
If you look at the document linked at the bottom of the page you shared: https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/kihonkeikaku/5basicplan_en.pdf
it mentions the following list of priorities for the plan, and with a bit of creativity it is possible to imagine ways how cheap, powerful, compact lasers could benefit each of them in turn. Probably, and more mundanely, the researchers are doing their best to justify their research grants by connecting the outcomes to the political priorities of the day.
"Hence, Japan will consolidate the following fundamental technologies in particular, which function as core technologies in the real world, for new value creation in individual systems. - Robotics: technology expected to be used in various fields such as communication, social service/work assistance, and manufacturing - Sensor technology: technology that collects information from humans and all kinds of “things” - Actuator technology: technology related to activating mechanism, drive, and control devices in the real world, as well as the results of information processing and analysis obtained in cyberspace - Biotechnology: technology transforming sensor and actuator technologies - Human interface technology: technology using augmented reality, affective engineering, neuroscience, etc. - Material/nanotechnology: technology that leads to differentiated systems through enhanced functionality of various components, such as innovative structural materials and new functional materials - Light/quantum technology: technology that leads to differentiated systems through enhanced functionality of various components, such as innovative measuring techniques, information/energy transfer technology, and processing technology."
I'll bite. How do lasers help actuators? (But yeah, most of that only takes a little imagination.)
A society in which "the average car-buyer" has a tiny portable steel-melting laser is a society where I'm wearing welding goggles every time I leave the house. And I'm not sure how you even lock a bike or a door or a safe any more.
There are already so many ways to defeat locks, that locks are just there to keep honest people honest and to slow down criminals.
The laser in the article took 30 seconds to cut a a tiny disc out of a sheet of steel 100 micrometers thick. That isn’t going to change things on the theft front. There are much more effective methods available today.
Once my bicycle was such a piece of crap that someone stole the lock and left the bike.
lol, sounds like a Rodney Dangerfield gag
> There are already so many ways to defeat locks, that locks are just there to keep honest people honest and to slow down criminals.
If you live at a lower end apartment complex, you might be shocked at how many doors your key will unlock, if you apply a light turning pressure and thrust the key in and out a few times.
I know I was. But it came in handy when one of my xmas gifts had been delivered to the front office, and I needed to pick it up after hours in order to make a redeye flight the next morning. I just used my own room key to open the office (setting off the alarm!), grabbed the package with my name on it, and closed and relocked the door and was gone before anyone investigated.
sounds like you basically just used your key as a bump key
Yeah, that's exactly it- but the point is I was using an unmodified key.
I've tried this on higher-end tumblers and I could really feel that it wasn't going to work. It's just about the el-cheapo builder-grade locks (which comprise a shocking percentage of home and apartment locks).
The quality of locks has always been measured in time.
When you get down to it, most security measures are ultimately based around creating enough delay that someone can respond with violence.
P.S.: Trying to think of the rare examples that don't qualify, and so far:
1. Direct violent response, e.g. booby-traps.
2. Denial by destroying whatever the attacker wanted, or delaying them enough that time renders it valueless.
3. Denial by making the effort unprofitable, even with no hard time limits.
A dutch women told me once a story, where she but a used bike in Amsterdam and the heroin addict who sold it to her, threaten her to steal it again, if she does not use a heavy lock.
When I moved to the Netherlands my boss told me to never spend more than 20 euro on a bike because it will get stolen. I didn't listen, and lo and behold two weeks in my 75 euro bike and the 35 euro heavy duty lock disappeared
I'm skeptical:
* Where do you buy a ≤20 euro bike?
* Most people on the street have bikes that look to be at least 200 euros new, from what I can tell.
I've never done it, but you buy it from the thief (junkie) directly. So it could be that you find them by word of mouth, like you would use to buy drugs when they were illegal. But you can also buy a second hand bike very cheaply, some are even free (just an example: https://www.marktplaats.nl/v/fietsen-en-brommers/fietsen-her...). New bikes are usually more than 200 euros, dutch brands are 500 euros and up
Presumably from the bike thieves. There's a glut in the stolen bike market so the price competition is fierce.
It seems like that that point the bike thieves are just a bike rental company.
You get the bike for < 20 Euro and then, presumably, at some point in the future it gets stolen again, but you already got 20 Euros worth of use out of it.
"Discount Variable Duration" rental program.
Efficient market hypothesis proven.
Last time I bought a bike for £20 even second-hand, the Euro had not yet been introduced.
Even in 2011, when I made the mistake of spending £90 for a new bike… well, the pedals came off while riding it due to metal fatigue.
Adjusting for inflation*, I'd expect similar build quality from a bike that "only" cost €200 today.
* hard to do when there is also a currency switch, especially when the exchange rate has changed so much
This was 2010-ish and I found one on Marktplaats. Might be going for 40 or 50 now with inflation. People selling them on the street also had for cheap, but these were most definitely stolen.
They didn't mention the year of the story, it could've happened a couple of decades ago.
Police unclaimed bike auctions maybe.
That is rather sad to hear.
Does the Netherlands have a law against knowingly buying stolen property?
The Netherlands famously has more bicycle thefts per year than citizens. At this point you could almost think of cheap commuter bikes as public property.
People in countries where bicycling is not seen as a personality statement generally ride very cheap city bikes around town. Last time I bought one of those in college it cost about 30eur. Is not like in SF where people ride 3000 dollar bikes to work because omg you’re a cyclist now and this is your whole identity.
Here in the part of Canada I live in, you see some of the $3000 bike identity stuff, but most people ride something in the $500–$750 range. Something practical, comfortable, reliable, etc.
There is also a growing segment of people who use $5,000–$15,000 cargo/kid carrier bikes as replacements for their cars, which is cool. But I do worry about theft of those increasing. Right now I rarely hear of it, but it seems likely to increase. Even the motors and batteries in them cost thousands alone.
> The Netherlands famously has more bicycle thefts per year than citizens.
No, it definitely does not!
750k bike thefts for 17.7m people. So roughly one per 25 people...
It famously has more bicycles than people!
Of course they have more bicycles than people, the bikes keep getting stolen!
> think of cheap commuter bikes as public property.
Didn't Amsterdam try that with 'white bikes' in the 1970s?
Every place in the world does probably. But how would you prove an unmarked, cheap bike was stolen?
You wouldn't but nowadays no bike is unmarked, even the cheap ones.
Can’t you trivially deface an identifier?
In Belgium, it's a hard to remove sticker on a consistent place with a qr code.
It would take work to remove it cleanly and/or cost money/time to paint over it.
So it's less attractive.
Ps. You'll still need to take care of your 10 k. Bike ofc.
Ps. 2 : engraving isn't done anymore since bike frames got smaller.
How would you know a marked bike was stolen? Does the police offer a public listing of all the stolen bikes?
(I do not think so, but this probably would make sense)
If you can't and the owner can and if you are caught then you are liable.
If the seller threatens to "steal it again".
I divide locking systems into three classes:
1. Can be opened without tools
2. Can be opened with generic tools (e.g. hammer, hacksaw)
3. Can be opened with specialized tools (e.g. lock picks, liquid nitrogen)
> 100 micrometers thick
1/10 of a millimeter. Thick foil (perhaps 4x generic Al foil).
The battery powered angle grinder was the end of useful bike locks AFAIK.
There are bike locks that do mostly defeat angle grinders. They are not cheap, of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpVOTEOMRuE
https://www.amazon.com/Kryptonite-Evolution-Integrated-Chain...
I don't know why you would link a video instead of saying the sentence "chain locks are hard to cut with an angle grinder because the chains are hard to hold steady"
I forgot to add that clarification, thanks.
Pfft. I had a medium-grade bike lock in college, and I once accidentally stole a bike because somebody with the same color/model/lock parked in front of the same building as me. My key was a bit stiff and I kind of had to force it, but it worked fine. I just remember thinking "why does this seat feel different?" Took me a couple of days to figure it out. I put it back- sure hope the original owner came and looked again after his initial disappointment that day.
Ref: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aBxyaFf379g&t=1m4s
Tl;dr if your lock doesn't double-lock (both sides) and have a cut-resistant core, it's only stopping people who can't afford a Ryobi angle grinder
> There are already so many ways to defeat locks, that locks are just there to keep honest people honest and to slow down criminals.
Yeah, I'm currently waiting on parts to replace my door handle. As far as I can tell, the would-be thieves snapped off the handle to make an opening, and used that to cut/snap the rear part of the lock (which normally can't turn because of the lock cylinder) and then substituted in a screwdriver to convince the car that the lock had turned.
Thankfully--and puzzlingly--they were unprepared for the steering-wheel lock and only managed to mangle and bend it (probably with a small bolt-cutter) before they gave up or were spooked off.
'Course, after that they would have still been unable to start the car for other reasons, but it still saved me the cost of fixing a torn-up ignition.
Because of this Switzerland has outlawed portable laser pointers higher than the lowest class.
Anything more powerful than a low end projector pointer is now classified as a weapon and regulated as such.
This at least keeps these units out of the hands of the general public and those that can't use them responsibly.
It sucks for those of us who used them responsibly just like we did with RC aircraft before drones became an item on a discount shelve. However at least I know that if I go to a large event or even a demo I won't be permanently blinded by some idiot.
Same in Norway, in 2015. Anything above 1mW is forbidden in practice although the law leaves the actual limit and exceptions to the regulating authority.
What keeps someone from driving across the border to acquire one, or ordering on ebay, or getting one at a sketchy shop? "Some idiot" is exactly the kind of person that would ignore the law.
I mean it seems like a fine law, but it's a law so now I never have to think about it again seems strange to me. Running stop signs is outlawed but I still look before I cross the street.
It doesn't stop anyone. But packages are randomly checked and so are cars going over the border.
Same goes for guns. Someone can aquire one illegally but fines are high and there is no impulsive purchase at the next Kiosk so circulation is low and you aren't going to get "lasered" by 20+ green lasers at some event.
My bike is protected by Anti-Theft Aesthetics (tm).
An Apple-specific magazine in Brazil made a contest to come up with stickers for the back of the first iPhones. My entry was also an anti-theft device, with the image of a Microsoft Zune.
ha, we used to call that the "P.O.S. theft deterrent system"
I hate to tell you this, but you can already buy infrared lasers off of eBay which have completely invisible beams which can blind yo.
This is something that makes me nervous any time I see YouTube videos about these sorts of lasers. They can blind someone nearly instantly, silently, and invisibly from a quarter mile away. That's terrifying.
"The average car-buyer or metalworker" can already afford a $30 cordless angle grinder:
https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/grinders/angle-gri...
(Cost plus a $30-$80 battery, of course, but after you pick your color, you've already got batteries). Your locks are far more protected by the social contract that would compel a stranger to stop someone who was cutting a bike lock with an angle grinder, and would cause a thief to fear arrest, prosecution, and jail time, than by actual physical security.
If you want a laser, you can already get a 100W CO2 laser tube for $500:
https://www.amazon.com/Cloudray-W2-Dia-80mm-Engraver/dp/B08G...
It won't do a great job of cutting steel - it will engrave it, but to cut steel you'd need O2 assist gas and a lot more power. It will trivially cut ABS, foam, fabric, wood veneer/thin plywood, cardstock, etc. if attached to a pair of mirrors on an XY stage such as might be borrowed/scaled up from a 3D printer. And, of course, it will trivially scar corneas with the invisible danger of its 10,600 nm laser light. Good news, though - ordinary polycarbonate safety glasses are opaque to the extreme IR light.
Laser safety is serious business, but highly-collimated, tightly-focused laser light is not likely to be produced by a cheap, portable laser. The above tube produces a 100W beam with a diameter of about 8mm. I wouldn't put my eyeball in the path, but a safety shutter can sit in the beam indefinitely and merely get warm. You melt steel by focusing a this 8mm beam down to a infinitesimally tiny spot, and beyond the focal length of your optics it diffuses to something no more dangerous than the source 8mm beam, and beyond that it's no more dangerous than an average lightbulb - albeit one that you have no aversion response/blink reflex to. I always wear my goggles near our cutting lasers, but I know lots of guys who have worked around 20W-20,000W CO2 lasers their entire lives and they're pretty cavalier with regards to laser safety.
Finally, a welding mask is a neutral-density filter, suitable for the (very approximately) black-body radiation produced by a welder, and is much less effective than laser safety goggles at blocking high-intensity light of a very specific color. Depending on the sensor, an auto-darkening mask might not even trigger when exposed to a laser! You'd want a set of 940nm laser safety goggles for this, which is far more exotic and dangerous than a 10um CO2 laser.
Don't cut vinyl with your laser, it will produce chlorine gas which will not be good for you to breathe and will corrode your equipment. Use a dragknife cutter instead.
It does work, and I've got great filtration and ventilation, but yeah, probably not a good idea. Edited. Same caution is true of PVC, which is a shame because it's really convenient for making the aforementioned ventilation systems!
A question I've always had: How do I know if my glasses protect against a particular laser? I'm talking about the ones in hobby CNC machines, laser hair removal places, etc, not high-powered industrial ones, where there's likely a high degree of know-how on safety already?
Best bet is to buy two pairs and stick one in the path of the beam with a sensor or target behind it. Otherwise you're looking up charts for the materials spectral absorption in your lasers emission band
But even if the target isn't cut, that doesn't mean I won't get eye damage, does it? Or do glasses protect even if they're only a bit opaque to the target wavelength?
First of all, I take no responsibility for your safety, I'm just some person on a forum.
That being said, it's all a function of how much light enters your eye. You can look up the exposure limits of the human retina for different frequencies of light to get an idea how little is actually required to damage your eye. The target or sensor should be sensitive enough to react to that much incident light. Just putting something behind the glasses and have it not get cut is definitely not enough to indicate no eye damage.
Proper laser goggles come with ratings. Dependent on the laser wavelength, beamsize, energy/power and pulse duration. Most goggle suppliers will tell you what you need if you supply the laser specs.
"Use goggles to protect remaining eye"
A long while ago, I was told that the flight deck crew on Air Force One would wear eyepatches during nuclear drills, so that if (hopefully temporarily) blinded by an airborne nuke, would be able to continue flying after switching the eyepatch to the other eye.
"Yarr Force One, reporting."
Everyone can already afford a stick welder. We don't need goggles when we leave the house.
Those can’t blind you from a distance though. Not nearly the same risk
They absolutely can. Anyone around them for long enough has dead spots in their eyes.
Not at all the same risk profile. Arc welding is just a really bright UV light, and without appropriate protection, it will cause what is essentially a sunburn on the surface of the eye. It is painful, but it usually heals in a couple of days. It shouldn't significantly damage the retina.
Laser light is different: a laser is effectively a point light source, and it will focus inside the eye to a single point with enough brightness to cause a burn. It can cause a permanent blind spot, and damage may happen faster and be less noticeable at first.
I mean like a bystander walking by a construction site who just happens to catch a bad reflection for a fraction of a second
The headlights of 2024 Ford F150 can blind me from a distance.
yes, but not permanently. You can certainly get dazzled by bright headlights, I can anyway.
but laser light, like staring into the sun, will destroy the delicate structure of your retina, and it doesn't grow back.
A hard kill APS might help.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_protection_system
> A society in which "the average car-buyer" has a tiny portable steel-melting laser is a society where I'm wearing welding goggles every time I leave the house.
VR-headset will be better, because it can attune brightness and contrast so you can see even at dusk.
The same can be said of BB guns that can put out eyes, lock picks that can open locked doors, and bolt cutters than can break chains.
More powerful tools are a good thing.
A BB gun has to be used very intentionally to hurt your eyes. A high-powered laser could blind you because your neighbor is doing some work on his shed and you caught a reflection
Have you not heard of stray bullets, crossfire etc?
BB gun — that's as in "ball bearing" — also known as "airsoft".
In this example, crossfire would require someone to walk into an airsoft combat area without any eye protection and for someone in that game to not realise and shoot them anyway. In the face.
Stray BB bullets don't go very far. They're not rifled, and they have fairly low muzzle energy compared to real weapons — I've shot myself with one at zero range, and even on bare skin it stings rather than penetrates.
A bb gun and an airsoft gun are very different things to me. A bb gun shoots metal balls and airsoft shoots plastic. I would not want to be hit by a bb gun, but an airsoft gun is no big deal (though the snipers can definitely hurt).
Diffuse reflection is only dangerous up to a few feet away. You're neighbor would have to be deliberately aiming the beam at your eye to blind you assuming you're not in the shed with them.
>The same can be said of BB guns that can put out eyes
I know! these are the same people who took mostly harmless Jarts off the market!
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31176/how-one-dad-got-la...
What about nuclear weapons, which have become so accessible that even small organizations can have them?
When small organisations get nuclear explosives, the only two safe options are:
1. Spending your life in a nuclear bunker and only interacting via the internet — including pure VR and/or remote controlled robot bodies.
2. Let your government poke around everywhere to make sure nobody is making (or importing) their own nukes, regardless of what anyone says about the 2nd amendment.
What makes you think so ?
This is a terrifying prospect indeed, especially being located in the Netherlands, plenty bikes are getting stolen left and right already.
But I guess this is inevitable, so we'll just have to devise better solutions than the simple locks which in their working principles have not changed in the past 100+ years.
Great market opportunity around the corner I suppose.
Plenty of locks are mostly just for show anyway. See Lockpicking Lawyers youtube channel.
Yes, but the average bike thief is looking for an easy steal and will avoid wasting time on a locked bike. Bikes in the Netherlands usually have 2 locks (a wheel lock and an extra chain), so thieves will usually move on from those first. A portable laser might allow a thief to steal even previously safer bikes just because it makes it quicker and silent (I'm assuming both).
It won’t be quicker. The laser in the demonstration was cutting through 100 micrometers of steel.
Cutting through a chain is going to take much much longer. There are already quicker methods to cut or break bike chains and disable locks.
Also cutting with a laser requires very precise alignment with respect to distance. You won’t be free handing this. You’d need to mount it on a device capable of precisely adjusting the distance as you cut deeper into the metal.
Plus it’s relatively easy to engineer laser resistant materials.
Probably not. Heating steel doesn't cut it, it just forms a puddle of molten metal that will cling to the base material. For cutting to work, you need to blow it off somehow.
For plasma and oxy-fuel cutting, the hot gases coming out the nozzle acts as the mass that blows it off. Air carbon arc gouging uses regular compressed air to push the molten material away. I imagine industrial laser cuttings dealing with anything larger then a few millimetres thick would use compressed air as well.
I doubt a smaller more efficient laser is going to change that reality.
It is an interesting problem since the existence of one cutter forces on offense forces all defenders to make substantial changes. I suspect the most expedient way will be to semi-criminalize carry of the devices, similar to spray paint in some places.
Is this effectively a force field? Not in a literal sense, just in terms of being able to stop anything airborne practically instantly.
Obviously impossible to defend against weapons like Russia's tsunami-triggering underwater nukes. But seems to rule out anything air-based?
Looking forward to this used in car headlights, dazzle's gonna be awesome.
How about for people who are tailing hard -- just pop them in the rear view :S
Car brained people as soon as a new weapon is invented: "how can I use this to kill someone driving 5km/h faster/slower than me?"
Why didn't they just call them light sabers? Such a missed opportunity.
It looks to me like we are on the cusp of the laser handguns era
Laser handguns are probably never going to be a thing. How many places are there on a human body where a cauterized hole a few mm across will kill or incapacitate someone? How likely is someone going to be to hit those places accurately with a pistol?
There are some interesting niche uses for laser sniper carbines[1], IMO, like punching holes in a gas tank and igniting the vapour, burning out security camera sensors, cutting power/communications lines, starting fires inside distant buildings by firing through windows, etc., but I think most useful laser weapons will be mounted and computer-controlled so that they can track moving targets long enough to do meaningful damage.
[1] It's not a rifle if the bore is smooth.
you’re not thinking creatively enough. a mm-sized hole may not incapacitate someone but a mm-thick slice across their belly would disembowel them. just wave it around!
Things like this make me think Moore's law still has a lot of runaway beyond transistor density and raw computing power.
Why would a welding laser have anything to do with moore's law?
Shrinking things on silicon wafers..
The article explains that it has potential for welding and other commercial applications but it's not quite there yet. It did cut through 100um steel. It's a good read.
What does that have to do with "shrinking thing on silicon wafers" ? This isn't really even new technology. Welding and cutting lasers have been around for a while. Do you think that cutting steel and making CPUs is the same process or that making smaller transistors just needs more power in the laser?
Tl;dr from the article is that a chip or array of chips can soon replace a refrigerator-sized CO2 laser. They went from 1W to 50W in about 10 years, and have a path to kW scale which could replace those large industrial CO2 lasers with something much much smaller.
Some googling confirmed that Moore wrote about component density, not specifically transistors. That confirms my hunch. An increasingly higher output laser on silicon fits the same pattern of exponential growth.
Hope that helps you understand where I was coming from. As a layperson it seems like exciting science with lots of commercial and scientific applications (that are also described in the article).
> Gordon Moore’s famous article is published in Electronics magazine. In the article, Moore predicts an annual doubling of component density on an integrated circuit at minimum manufacturing costs. Moore later identified “a component” as “transistor, resistor, diode or capacitor.”
https://spectrum.ieee.org/moores-law-milestones
No
Neat! That looks like it's weithin an order of magnitude or two of becoming a real ray gun. I hope I can snatch up a few when they hit the consumer market before imdiatly getting banned.
All the handwringing about how horrible bad things will happen when these lasers are out there.....can we please just have a nice, happy, optimistic article about the great future which awaits us??
Looks like a good tattoo
[dead]
This article smells so much the "if you want the eternal life, give me more money right now".
I can't help but think, was this part of Tesla's famed "death ray"?