Homemade 'Laser Shotgun' - 8000 times more powerful than an average laser

Just because you can make something at home, doesn't necessarily mean you should. Today's example? A laser 'shotgun' that uses a lens to combine eight 5W lasers into something that should definitely spice up your next PowerPoint.

The terrifying death machine was built by a YouTuber styropyro, who has a long and detailed history of messing around with lasers. This particular rig uses eight 5W lasers, mounted with parallel beams onto a giant heatsink behind a magnifying glass. To put the 40 watts in perspective: regular laser pointers have around 0.005W of power behind them. That makes this thing about 8,000 times more powerful than the kind used for presentations.

In all fairness, a lot of the power of the laser shotgun is presumably lost, as the light is scattered somewhat by the optics. But Anthony admits that such a creation can be dangerous and insists "there's no good reason for someone to own something this powerful."