Hacksmith Industries: Laser Cutter Iron Man Gauntlet

2023-04-22 | By The Hacksmith

License: See Original Project

This project was created by Engineering Superheroes of Hacksmith Industries.

DO NOT ATTEMPT to Re-Create

Over the years, Hacksmith Industries has been working on a real-life Iron Man suit and has had several upgrades. A while back, the team made a plasma cutter gauntlet that could cut through metal like butter. It was super effective, but it lacked the range of Iron Man’s real lasers. In order to get more range on the gauntlet’s laser cutter, the latest upgrade solves that problem… with a real laser! See how it works in the video below!

How Does It Work?

The laser in the gauntlet is a 1.5 Kilowatt fiber laser. Prior to this, the most powerful laser in the Iron Man suit was a 100 watt blue laser from the repulsor project. In the last few years, lasers have become far less expensive – the laser used in this project dropped in price from hundreds of thousands of dollars to just $6,000!

The laser’s lens is from a laser welder that was slimmed down by removing the parts that weren’t needed in order to fit inside the gauntlet. The power source is way too big to fit in a glove, so a wire from the larger unit feeds into the glove, similar to the earlier lightsaber designs. Now the only parts in the gauntlet are a collimating lens and a focusing lens. They needed to be aligned precisely in order to focus the light for maximum intensity.

Hacksmith Laser Lens

The gauntlet itself is assembled from 66 separate pieces of stainless steel. The stainless steel pieces go over a kevlar glove and a chainmail glove, and air is pumped into a bladder to make the glove fit snugly on the wearer’s hand.

The controls run through an Arduino Nano, which allows the gas feed and laser power to be turned off and on using switches, which move a solenoid. This lets the wearer melt things from a distance with the push of a button. This control system is powered by a small 12V battery that also fits inside the gauntlet.

Schematic and BOM

More Iron Man and MCU Projects on Maker.io

Hacksmith Industries has been working on a fully functional Iron Man suit for a few years now — you can view the whole series on their Youtube channel. Many of these projects can also be found on Maker.io!

Iron Man Projects

More MCU Projects

More Lasers and Plasma!