This guy could be about as close to a true Jedi as it’s possible to be – he’s only gone and made his own lightsaber.
According to Mashable 23-year-old YouTuber Drake Anthony (AKA styropyro) was inspired by Allen Pan’s now infamous flamethrower lightsaber and decided to have a go at putting his own twist on the Jedi weapon. He used a 7-watt blue laser instead of fire and the result is a lightsaber that’s powerful enough to cut through stuff.
In the video, Anthony demonstrates how his homemade lightsaber can set fire to tape, burn a cup, ignite plasma, cut soldering wire in half and even engrave wood.
Just in case you want to have a go at making your own, Anthony doesn’t go into detail of how he built his but he does provide a look at the inner workings:
My device uses a Nichia GaN laser diode, which was overdriven to 7W of output by running it at 4.6A with a couple high efficiency buck drivers in parallel. An anti-reflective coated glass lens focuses the beam, and the whole device is powered by two unprotected 18650 batteries in series.
Impressive no? Anthony assures us he’s working on even bigger, stronger and more badass laser projects including a ‘laser bazooka’ and another ‘ruby laser’ that projects a beam through a ruby crystal and is powered by explosives.
As long as he puts up more videos showing his progress i’ll be there. The force is strong with this one.