now THAT is inventive…

Did you know this was even possible with pc parts?  Wow.  If more people could use cyber waste parts to recycle them into other uses maybe many of the landfills would be reduced and we could save a lot of time and money.  A brief excerpt from the narrator himself, here is what he does in this video:

Here I take an old computer and utilize its parts to make a burning laser! This is one of my favorite DIY laser projects out there, as it makes use of old parts and makes a very cool final project.

Hopefully this will inspire more people to experiment with old computer parts!

Of course in a video like this there will always be some interesting comments on experienced inventors and novices as well.

commenter pvc998 asks

I wonder why you don’t use ground wire from the PSU. I mean… Red wire is +5V, yellow wire is +12V and black is 0V (ground). Using red and yellow would give you something about 7V (which is what you get) but normally the current is supposed to flow from them to the ground wire and not between them. There are also few more problems with doing that (which I won’t be discussing now).

Is there any particular reason for using red and yellow instead of black and yellow?

another commenter melodic posts

Laser diodes need constant current, so any extra voltage that the driver and laser diode don’t use gets turned into waste heat in the driver. That extra 5V times nearly the half an amp that the circuit is taking puts an extra 2.5W into the driver, which is unnecessary. 7V is enough to power the circuit/laser without causing overheating!

We hope you enjoyed this video and don’t try this at home without the supervision of a professional.  Lasers are cool and can be very dangerous so definitely consult and only work with safety pros when it comes to these types of experiments.