Very cool. Reminds me of the times in middle/high school when I used to hunt down computer repair shops and scavenge old or spoilt dvd/cd drives to build lasers

Very cool. Reminds me of the times in middle/high school when I used to hunt down computer repair shops and scavenge old or spoilt dvd/cd drives to build lasers. The diodes harvested from drives that could write to disks were powerful enough to burn through black tape and even light matches! All you needed was an LM317T voltage regulator and a housing for the diode if my memory serves my correctly. Fun times, as long as you stayed safe :)