More Mirrors (and A Little Audio) Mean More Laser Power

Lasers are pretty much magic — it’s all done with mirrors. Not every laser, of course, but in the 1980s, the most common lasers in commercial applications were probably the helium-neon …

Chinese Subs May Be Propelled Silently By Lasers

If sharks with lasers on their heads weren’t bad enough, now China is working on submarines with lasers on their butts. At least, that’s what this report in the South China Morning Post…

Optical Tweezers Investigate Tiny Particles

No matter how small you make a pair of tweezers, there will always be things that tweezers aren’t great at handling. Among those are various fluids, and especially aerosolized droplets, which…

Wooden Desk Lamp Uses Unusual Dimmer

One of the problems with laser cutting projects is that while they look good, they often look like they were laser cut. [Timber Rough] has a wooden desk lamp that not only looks good but has one of…

This Unique Flip-Flop Uses Chemistry And Lasers

One of the first logic circuits most of us learn about is the humble flip-flop. They’re easy enough to build with just a couple of NOR or NAND gates, and even building one up from discrete co…

What The Artisan 3-in-1 CNC Offers (If One Has The Table Space)

I never feel like I have enough space in my workshop. The promise of consolidating tools to make the most of limited space drew me to the Snapmaker Artisan, a plus-sized 3-in-1 tool combining 3D pr…

Particle Accelerator… On A Chip

When you think of a particle accelerator, you usually think of some giant cyclotron with heavy-duty equipment in a massive mad-science lab. But scientists now believe they can create particle accel…

Take The Tedium Out Of Fabric Cutting, Make The Laser Do It

Fabric must be cut before it can be turned into something else, and [fiercekittenz] shows how a laser cutter can hit all the right bases to save a lot of time on the process. She demonstrates proce…

Paperless RFID Tags Are Carbon-Based

RFID tags are great little pieces of technology, but unfortunately, the combination of paper, metal, and silicon means they are as bad as some modern pregnancy tests — single-use electronic d…

Atomic Antenna Uses Lasers

If you think about it, an antenna is nothing more than a radio frequency energy sensor, or — more precisely — a transducer. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there could be diff…

Memorialize Your Favorite Chips In Slate

There’s no point in denying it — if you’re a regular reader of Hackaday, you’ve almost certainly got a favorite chip. Some in the audience yearn for the simpler days of the …

Tattoo-Removal Laser Brought Out Of Retirement For A Megawatt Of Fun

We’ve got to say that [Les Wright] has the most fun on the internet, at least in terms of megawatts per dollar. Just look at his new video where he turns a $30 eBay tattoo-removal laser into …

Femtosecond Laser Clones Itself In Glass

When researchers at the Galatea laboratory in Switzerland set out to create a femtosecond in glass they weren’t certain it was going to work. To be precise, their goal was to create a femtose…

Mosquito Laser Death Grid Is Just What It Sounds Like

Mosquitoes suck. Quite literally. [Allen Pan] lives in an area where they’re so thick in the air, regular methods of killing them fail to put a dent in their numbers. Thus, he set about build…

Cold Metal Fusion For 3D Printing

When you see the term cold fusion, you probably think about energy generation, but the Cold Metal Fusion Alliance is an industry group all about 3D printing metal using Selective Laser Sintering (S…

Tricks For Mass-Producing Laser-Etched Art

Art is a funny thing. Sometimes, it’s best done in a one-off fashion and sold for a hugely inflated price. Othertimes, it’s more accessible, and it becomes desirable to sell it in great…

Entertain Your Cats Automatically With LazerPaw

Most of us would agree that kittens are very cute, but require lots of attention in return. What would you do if you adopted three abandoned cats but didn’t have all day to play with them? [H…

Review: WAINLUX K8, A Diode Laser That’s Ready To Work

Rarely a week goes by that some company doesn’t offer to send us their latest and greatest laser. You know the type — couple of aluminum extrusions, Class 4 diode flopping around in the…

This 3D Scanner Uses A Sensor You Might Not Know About

The huge diversity of sensors and other hardware which our community now has access to seems comprehensive, but there remain many parts which have made little impact due to cost or scarcity. It&#82…

Laser Engraver Uses All Of The DVD Drive

For the last ten to fifteen years, optical drives have been fading out of existence. There’s little reason to have them around anymore unless you are serious about archiving data or unconvinc…