
BIG thank you to Esco Optics for making me the mirrors for the laser. It turns out that finding mirrors that don't vaporize in a massive laser cavity like this is difficult, but coming up with the right coating was no problem for the Esco engineers.
escooptics.com
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In this video I quickly go over the construction of this laser, and then do a few test shots with some plastic, a razor blade, and a glass bottle. The peak output power on this laser is around 50kW.
Wanna see just how terrifying that power supply is? See it destroy stuff in this video:
The power supply uses a variac for adjustable voltage and feeds that into a pair of matched microwave oven transformers, From there the output is fed into a homemade Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier, which is capable of up to 20kV at a dangerously high current. That feeds into the capacitor bank, and then the laser can be fired using a trigger based on a car ignition coil and 555/MOSFET combo.