It's a Farnsworth fusor, of course it's not. It's an enormous accomplishment for a couple of high school kids all the same - kind of makes you think of Rocket Ship Galileo, minus the moon Nazis.

When people see something like this, I think they immediately think of Tony Stark, or the Wright Brothers. Something quite romanticized. This teenage is probably smarter than I am, but he's not breaking even in his bedroom.

He also mentions building a laser.

> a wood burning CO2 laser turret

I'd be interested in the details about that. I did some research about what it would take to build a basic laser years and years ago, but gave up when I saw the kind of chemicals I'd need to handle. I wasn't confident I could deal with the chemicals correctly in my tiny apartment.

I've looked into that as well. There are a bunch of lasers that are DIY-able, and AFAIK dye-based lasers are the only ones that really require "chemicals".

TEA lasers are basically just a few pieces of metal and high-voltage, seen them at high-school level quite a few times: http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/tealaser/tealaser7.htm

CO2 lasers are relatively complex and are easiest if you buy some parts readymade, but can be completely homebuild as well: http://jarrodkinsey.org/co2laser/co2laser.html

There are tons of ressources online, a good overviw over different possibilities and basic information can be found here: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/laserfaq.htm#faqtoc

This makes me think of "October Sky"

He already answered that it's nowhere near the breakeven point. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4tgsaz/iama_i_built_a...