The "Laser Idea" - Last updated 03 October 2023

Pictures coming soon. Essentially, I have kicked around the idea of a "spider" for a few years now. I don't recall ever seeing anything quite like what I want, so I will need to make it myself. This type of project is larger than any I've ever undertaken. Given my hopes and dreams for a career, I should probably get better at projects like this. This is mostly a good excuse to practice using arduinos, fabricating basic stuff, soldering, etc. But it will also be a wildly radical gift, and an excellent utility item for general use.

Planning phases:

1. What is it?
2. What theory applies?
3. What is needed?
4. Acquiring hardware.
5. Assembling hardware.
6. What now?

These will each populate this project page as they are reached. In that way, anyone following along can see the project come to life in near real time!

What it is:

The idea is to angle several laser beams onto a single point. This point will not be fixed, and so the beam angles will need to be adjusted in real time so that they all overlap. In theory, this should lead to a net delivery of about 7-8x the energy of a single beam. From what I have researched, there is no way to coherently combine more than two beams. However, from the can kicking I've read online: pointing "n" number of beams, of energy level "E", at a single point, will approximately deliver "n" times the amount of energy "E" to the point.

I am not an expert, and my terminology is undoubtably incorrect. Hopefully this page becomes more and more accurate as I inevitably am forced to do more research on the topic.

Tonight, in lieu of actual sources or anything credible, here is the start of a rough sketch.

As you can see, it is far from even being put on paper. But I have a general idea of what I'll need and what I may have to do:

• I'll need step motors.
• A central and progammable control that can do calculations as well. An arduino?
• Eight bluray lasers (maybe)
• Wiring and Solder
• A non-goofy way to power everything.
• A way of measuring the distance between the "point of focus" and a fixed point on the device.
• Actual, measured, schematics.
• More items coming.