Homemade laser shotgun is now a thing and it looks awesome

8 Jun 2015

No doubt worrying his neighbours, one young engineer has pulled all the stops out to build his very own working laser shotgun, which aside from looking really cool, can also actually make objects go up in flames.

It seems like every day Siliconrepublic.com is bringing you some new development in the field of laser weapons, whether it’s a new laser cannon developed by the US military, or their development of sound effects to make them sound like something from Star Wars.

Well now YouTuber styropyro has decided that, seeing as he had the technology, he might as well go ahead and build his own 40W laser shotgun capable of punching holes in objects silently and with deadly precision.

Showing off his gun, which looks like something Doc Brown from Back to the Future would create, he explains that, in relative terms, the gun is “complete insanity”.

To get this level of firepower, he combined eight 5W lasers into one, with each of the beams manipulated with a laser to create one combined beam.

Of course, such a weapon needs a large power source, which in the laser shotgun’s case is a lithium polymer battery pack capable up unloading 250 amps on the pull of the trigger.

“This is definitely the craziest thing I have ever built, but I hope to beat this invention with something even crazier before too long,” styropyro said on his video description.

For those wondering how he can create such a weapon, he seems to be well ahead of the lawmakers given that he says all of parts acquired are completely legal. Watch this space…

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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