Do It Yourself: Simple TEA Ultraviolet Laser

Make yourself a real laser out of scraps, junk, pennies and clothespins!

Inspired by Nyle Steiner’s work at
http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/tealaser/tealaser7.htm
Thanks, Nyle! I learned a lot from this project, and it works surprisingly well.

WARNING: This project uses HIGH VOLTAGE, and emits ULTRAVIOLET COHERENT LIGHT. So don’t go grabbing random stuff with your fingers, and don’t look into the invisible beam! I am not responsible for your blinded, twitching corpse if you screw up somehow. I can do this stuff because I have a lot of experience with high voltage and I know what I can get away with without killing myself… because I nearly have, several times. BE CAREFUL, keep one hand in pocket around HV kit, and wear safety glasses that block UV.

This is a simple but real Ultraviolet Laser, requiring no optics and only a few parts. The only difficult/dangerous part is the 6 kv power supply, but the laser can be operated from any DC source capable of making the voltage necessary, like a VanDeGraaff generator for instance.

The construction details can be found on Nyle’s website linked above, and the modifications and simplifications I made are obvious from this video. I decided to try the round barstock simply because I didn’t want to leave the house to go get some angle stock from the store. It seems to work fine! But I will also be trying the sharper edge of some brass shimstock for the smaller electrode later on; maybe it will work even better.

To make this I used stuff that I had lying around the lab:

A piece of 1/8 in thick Acrylite OP plastic for the base;
Some heavyduty aluminum foil for the bottom capacitor plate;
A piece of 0.004″ thick overhead transparency film for the dielectric;
Some strips of aluminum duct tape for the upper capacitor plates;
A 100k, 1/8 W resistor for the plate equalizer;
A length of 3/8″ aluminum barstock for the “wall” electrode;
A length of 3/16″ aluminum rod for the movable electrode;
4 US Copper Pennies for the spark gap;
Some clothespins to hold stuff down;
Some misc. bits of aluminum tape to make connections;
A “dayglow” plastic tub toy for a fluorescent target;
A yellow dayglow 6mm plastic airsoft BB, ditto;
A 4×6″ dayglow index card, ditto;
A power supply, 24 VDC in, 6.4 kV 1.2 mA out.

Total “new” cost: $0.04

Thanks for watching!

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