Mow Lasers, Mow Problems
Allen Pan's lawnmower uses high-powered lasers to cut the grass, but it is better at starting fires and blinding people than yardwork.
Summer may be starting to wind down, but yardwork is still a thorn in our sides. If it weren’t for all that time spent mowing and weeding, we could be hacking away on more weekend projects in our home electronics labs. If ever there was an urgent problem that required overly complex and somewhat ridiculous solutions, this is definitely it.
Creative engineer and YouTuber Allen Pan stepped up to the plate to propose a different way to tackle yardwork. With a fast-approaching ban on gas-powered lawnmowers in the state of California, Pan looked into electric options only to find that not only are they not especially good at cutting grass, but they are also quite expensive. So, after brainstorming about some other ways to cut grass that would be less expensive (and more fun!), Pan settled on using high-powered lasers, because why not?
Pan’s first attempt involved retrofitting a gas-powered mower with electric motors and a pair of 20 watt lasers. The idea was to spin the lasers around and essentially use them as replacements for traditional blades. But it was quickly discovered that this plan was not going to work — because they were spinning, the laser beams did not stay in contact with anything for a long enough amount of time to burn it. This first iteration looked impressive, but proved to be all bark and no bite.
Next up, a pair of more powerful 30 watt lasers were fitted onto a trimmer. This time there was no spinning, but even with the extra power, the lasers were still not up to the task. The lasers would get blocked by each blade of grass and so they could not slice through a dense patch. Increasing the power seemed futile, since the 30 watt lasers were already powerful enough to slice through the sheet metal that was designed to stop the beams for safety, so a different approach was needed.
The final version of the mower used a set of four lasers arranged into a grid, which was then attached to the inside of a lawnmower. It was hoped that all of the different angles from which the lasers originated would help them to slice through thick grass.
But that hope was misplaced. The mower was tested on a real lawn, and due to factors like the ground not being perfectly horizontal and the grass not staying still as the mower passes over it, it was not able to get the job done. Even a poor mowing job took about an hour per square foot.
The best results were achieved on patches of dry brown grass, so if your lawn is already dead, then maybe the mower will kind of work for you. It does also set these patches on fire though, so make sure you have a fire extinguisher at the ready. Or just use a better mower, which would be literally any mower other than this one.
What we can learn from Pan’s efforts is that you definitely do not want to cut your grass with lasers, but trying is a whole lot of fun (as long as you don’t set the yard on fire and blind yourself).
