I found the biggest laser!

[Anthony Welch]

This probably belongs in the "Off Topic" place, but here ya go...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h2g0h_fPZV6WJZ5aZRSUTu51CBcQD98HFHGG3

Anthony

[Albert Nix]

I bet you can mark stainless with that baby without cermark lol.

[George M. Perzel]

Yea, but can it cut wood???
Best regards;
George
LaserArts

[kyle bonnell]

Yea, but can it cut wood???
Best regards;
George
LaserArts


Yes it can but only to a depth of 4 inches.

[kevin leasure]

screw meatcards.com i wanna use this and laser my info on a whole building or maybe a side of clidesdale. man i would like to see em blast an asteroid with this thing.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Can you imagine the ALIGNMENT I do not think it would be as easy as our laser engravers 192 beams combined into one.

[John W. Love]

"The NIF, which is the size of a football field, consists of 192 separate laser beams, each traveling 1,000 feet in one-thousandth of a second to converge simultaneously on a target the size of a pencil eraser."

I wonder what speed and power you use to etch a picture of Einstein on the eraser. I am also betting it is a pain to center the object when it is a 1000 feet from your source.

[Scott Shepherd]

They could have saved a lot of money if they would have bought the Chinese model :D

[Doug Griffith]

" I am also betting it is a pain to center the object when it is a 1000 feet from your source.

At that distance, I bet even the gravitational pull of the moon makes a difference. It would have to dynamically focus itself.

[Dan Hintz]

They could have saved a lot of money if they would have bought the Chinese model :D
Yeah, but you'd have to use Hoover Dam to water cool it :D

[Bill Cunningham]

Hope they disabled the auto focus, nothing like crashing a nuclear fusion pellet into the laser head on startup.. That could meltdown your entire day! No One wants to hear a nuclear fusion scientist say "oops"!:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

[Albert Nix]

How far will a 36" lens stay in focus? My 40W runs on 220V, i bet that puppy has its own power plant.

[Dan Hintz]

How far will a 36" lens stay in focus? My 40W runs on 220V, i bet that puppy has its own power plant.
Depends on the beam size and M^2 factor, though I don't think we're likely to find out that kind of information anytime soon :)

[George Brown]

"The NIF, which is the size of a football field, consists of 192 separate laser beams, each traveling 1,000 feet in one-thousandth of a second

Something does not seem right. Light travels at 186,000 miles/sec. So in 1/1000 of a second, it travels 186 miles, not 1000 feet?:confused:

[Jason Roehl]

Something does not seem right. Light travels at 186,000 miles/sec. So in 1/1000 of a second, it travels 186 miles, not 1000 feet?:confused:

Light travels that fast in a vacuum. Perhaps there is another medium involved. That caught my eye, too, though. Or, perhaps it was a typo, and they meant 1/1000 of a millisecond (a microsecond), which would at least be in the ballpark.

I've never been impressed by journalists' numerical abilities.

[Marc Myer]

Hey, they're using laser beams to shoot down missiles now; I want one of those. And something that will allow me to live the fanatsy of shooting laser beams from my eyes.

[Bill Cunningham]

Light travels that fast in a vacuum. Perhaps there is another medium involved. That caught my eye, too, though. Or, perhaps it was a typo, and they meant 1/1000 of a millisecond (a microsecond), which would at least be in the ballpark.

I've never been impressed by journalists' numerical abilities.

Yup.. these are the same guys that embellish their articles with semiautomatic 'revolvers' and .22 cal. 'assault' weapons.. :D