GoKawiilSign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Email address Sign Up Thank you!
As the world’s de facto portal to the Chinese industrial machine, Alibaba probably doesn’t get as much credit as it should. With hundreds of thousands of sellers looking to supply their dirt-cheap wares directly to businesses, your typical entrepreneur is spoiled for choice. In the market for a military-grade diesel supply truck? They’ve got your back. Interested in an industrial gold trommel? Say no more!
But where the commoditized absurdity of Alibaba really shines, in our opinion, is in its cornucopia of bizarre laser products, a massive number of which are configured to look like handguns or even flashy, space-age rifles.
Although there are legitimate industrial-grade laser systems available on the conventional market, a motivated chaos enthusiast could easily get their hands on a pallet of handheld alternatives, like the pastel-colored “400W-500W handheld laser obstacle removal machine” sold on Alibaba by Shenzhen Liyang Welding Equipment Co Ltd for $885 to $1,150, depending on the model number and order size.
If you’re willing to shell out a little more, you could get your hands on the 1kW, 58V “remote-controlled igniter.” Sold by Gonglian International Trade (Nanjing) Co Ltd for just $1,600, a laser of this power can theoretically cut through 6mm of stainless or carbon steel, and is more than enough to cause blindness.
As you’re probably picking up by now, these aren’t toys.
According to a presentation on laser safety by the University of Utah’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, beams which can radiate 500mW for a quarter of a second “can easily cause permanent eye damage from exposures of 1/100th of a second or less.”
At double the radiant power, the laser rifle sold by Gonglian Trade Co would fall under the classification of “highly dangerous,” where even reflected laser light can “be hazardous to skin and eye within the nominal hazard zone.” There’s also the possibility these devices leak massive amounts of infrared radiation outside of the focused-beam, a well-known problem for handheld lasers.
As some pop-science YouTubers have found, these kinds of lasers — and their parts, which you can also buy wholesale — often come shipped with serial numbers scratched out, making them difficult to trace back to the original manufacturer, which may be different from the distributor listed on Alibaba.
Alibaba isn’t a direct-to-consumer service like Temu or eBay, but a business-to-business service, meaning you’d have to jump through some administrative hoops to get your hands on one of these. Still, within a minimum order of 1 on pretty much every laser we viewed, the risk that some guy orders a 1kW laser while baked on his couch isn’t exactly nonexistent.
... continue reading