I've heard from various places that the lasers in DVD burners can output up to somewhere around 350 milliwatts. I have also heard that a 350 milliwatt laser is powerful enough to use as a lighter. Is this true?

I have a broken DVD burner lying around somewhere; if there's any chance at all that I could get a laser out of it that can start fires, then I'm not going to hesitate in taking it apart.

Sometimes it will say what type of laser it is on the burner.

It's a shame there wouldn't be much in the way of projection distance... right?

That'd make a fun weapon.... as in really... really... DANGEROUS. Point it at someone's house and turn it on, point it some poor shmuck down the street and turn it on.

I feel so evil for thinking these thoughts... yet it'd be so much damn fun. Think of all the spontaneous combustion rumors you could spawn!

Optical drives are class I laser products. That means they do no damage to skin or even eyes. Directly pointed into the back of your retina, they won't do damage*.

So no, I don't think it will start a fire.

*Not responsible if some dumbass points a DVD laser in their eye.

Edit: Oh wait, you said DVD burner. Hmm. Look at the laser classification on the outside of the drive. If it's still listed as class I, there's no hope. To put out 350 mW it would need to be class IIIB. Read the Wikipedia article on laser safety and classification.

A 100w CO2 industrial cutting laser shouldn't be that hard to come by. If you're planning on killing people or setting houses ablaze, just steal one. You're already going to jail.

Less asking questions. More taking action and finding out for yourself.

CO2 lasers already work with so little power as 100w? Hmm... Interesting. That would be cool. Like one and a half light bulbs. Wouldn't be too bad as a toy (like wouldn't get your electricity bill jump too high if used rarely, and the fuses wouldn't say *pop*). Probably would be enough for melting plastic, or something.

I guess such a thing would be expensive, though...

I want a lazer lighter

Wasn't Kyle building a death ray from a used satellite dish?

Actually, 100 MILLIwatts is enough to melt holes in plastic, or so I've been lead to believe. A 100 watt laser would be much more interesting. But they aren't very efficient (usually about 10% i think) so it would take close to a kilowatt to run it. No different from a microwave oven though.

Oh. I was thinking about the input power (thus all that ranting about electricity bills). The output would be 10 watts according to the 10% efficiency prediction. Of course a kilowatt laser wouldn't either cause catastrophic electricity bills if you didn't use it like crazy... Perhaps 1kw input would be better after all.