Star Wars: Home Made Death Star Armed with Fully Functional Laser Array
Watch a dude turn a beach ball into a working Death Star able to destroy very small planets and cook a very well done steak!
What do you get when you combine 82 ft of electrical wiring, 262 ft of fiberglass, one gallon of paint, 32 sq ft of aluminum sheeting, 110 screws, and 14 6-watt lasers? A fully functional Death Star that could destroy a scale Endor easily.
Patrick Priebe (aka LaserGadgets) started this build with some pretty mundane materials – he coated a beachball in fiberglass and resin, cut a hole for the base plate, added a ring of LEDs to light the interior, and attached a bunch of aluminum panels to give it a quasi Death Star surface look with trenches.
It gets a bit complicated after that. The base plate for the ‘superlaser’ is a reflector from a halogen floor lamp; fourteen 6-watt lasers are mounted around the edge, each at just the right angle so they all converge in one 84-watt blistering hot point. It can cut through carbon steel easily. Priebe even added a plexiglass rod to achieve the one big beam effect seen in the movies.
