I've been umming and ahhing about what to do with this for the couple of weeks since I accidentally invented the thing (I was working on a solar energy device), and I thought you guys may be your usual well-spring of help and advice.
Basically I seem to have designed a device which will collimate an extended light source. Any light source. So you could, for example, turn a 100 Watt light bulb into a 100 Watt laser. Or a square meter of sunlight into a kiloWatt.
I haven't made it, but simming on the computer gives an optimal blow out rate of about 1/2 meters per kilometer, so over a range of meters or tens of meters it's pretty much as accurate as a normal laser.
The only upper limit I can see on how much power you could put through this thing is when the materials start melting, which would probably be pretty high.
There's really nothing fancy about it, it's just a shape. You could print it out easily on a 3d printer and fill it with some kind of settable glass for the total-internal-reflection. It would weigh about as much as a 2 litre bottle of water and be about the same size.
I was concerned about it being weaponisable, but even at a kiloWatt the lethal range would probably be less than 100 meters, in which case you might as well just get a gun.
I don't know if anyone's already done something like this, I can't find anything online, and people kept telling me it was supposed to be impossible.
It seems on the face fairly ethically neutral, but if there are potential problems with that I'm going to want to hear about them. Also if someone's already done it.
Mostly I'm wanting to know about potential applications and just how valuable this would be, industrially speaking.
But... it was developed on proffessional optical design software, and given the simplicity of the design I'm fairly confident, touch wood, that it would behave in reality pretty much as it does digitally.
But, yeah, you never know for sure till it's made.
So, assuming it does work at least well enough to use...
Assuming it does work: The main application that I would use it for would be a high efficiency laser cutter (could open the way for more in-house fabrication).
I would think the television, movie and theater business will make you an instant multi-millionaire.
Imagine being able to use a 150 Watt light bulb in a spotlight and getting 150 Watts on an actor's face 20 meters away. They'll replace their expensive, heavy, HOT 1,500 Watt spots overnight.
Well, I think you're one of the many who has been fooled by the simulation into thinking something is going to work when it isn't.
It happens all the time with electronic simulations and mechanical simulations. They simply cannot account for all the physics going on and you think you've come up with something until you try and build it and only then you find out it doesn't work.
The magazine is called MAKE: for a reason.
Build it and they will come.
(I really don't intend to sound snarky, but you're asking us for our ideas when you haven't done your part yet. Build a demonstration unit, show it works and the ideas will come flowing in.)
You probably haven't... What makes a laser a laser is just the collimation is the power density thru the aperture. A simple shape may collimate but something that could concentrate to a very narrow aperture would have to be manufactured to arbitrarily high tolerances. Anyway, that is way occurs to me.
Unlike Alan, I have no problem whatsoever delivering the snark:
Make one. For real, physically, outa stuff. If it works, well, you're holding the power to subjugate us all and we'd have no choice but to do your bidding and monetize it for you.
Although possession of a death ray in and of itself is pretty well an already monetized situation.
If it doesn't work, then the parties involved will all be on the same page and no longer wasting their time.
Right you are. I've got a mate in the relevant department of the local uni, I'll see what I can get done through them. Otherwise may well shell out for a 3d print and just fill the thing with water or mineral oil. (Probabally water, the surface tension will help smooth the surface. I won't have to put much power through to prove the principle.)