Man builds Iron Man-style palm-mounted laser weapon

By Andrew Couts July 22, 2011

laser-glove-mk-iii — Image used with permission by copyright holder

No matter how old you get, lasers will always be awesome. It’s just a rule of nature, like gravity or road rage or loving lasers. So it is our privilege — nay, our duty — to deliver to you one of the most supremely sweet home laser projects we’ve ever had the privilege to encounter: the Laser Glove MK III.

Designed by German lab technician Patrick Priebe, and based on Iron Man’s weaponry, the Laser Glove MK III truly looks like something out of science fiction. C-shaped, and worn on the hand so that the laser points directly out of the palm, the Laser Glove sports a 1000 mW 445nm laser diode, which is powerful enough to blind someone instantly. (Other than that, it lights matches, pops balloons and looks sweet.)

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Powered by two lithium-ion batters that are housed on the back of the glove, the MK III runs on just 7.4 volts of electricity. According to Hack a Day, this still makes the laser “just as powerful as the WickedLasers Spyder 3 Arctic – THE benchmark in portable handheld lasers” We did find a video of the Dragon Lasers Spartan beating the Spyder 3 Arctic, so that might be the benchmark. But what do we know? In short, Priebe’s Iron Man creation is brilliantly made, at least as far as anyone can see.

Priebe has hidden most of the information about the build from the public eye, as any good mad scientist should. We do know that he was wise enough to make the innards of his MK III entirely out of 2mm-thick brass. This creative design gives Priebe’s weapon — the third iteration of the device — a massive heat sink, which absorbs the heat created by the laser, allowing it to run for an impressive three minutes straight before needing to cool down.

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Features Editor for Digital Trends, Andrew Couts covers a wide swath of consumer technology topics, with particular focus on…

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