Guy Builds Working Handheld Tesla Lightning ‘Gun’, Watch As He Pulls The Trigger

Rob Flickenger is a real-life mad scientist. If you don’t believe me, just check out at this picture. That is not the look of a healthy-minded purveyor of technical topics. He even has a ray-gun of sorts to back up his insane engineering credentials — a working Tesla-inspired lightning gun. As its creator states: “You pull the trigger and lightning comes out the front.”

With the help of a mill, a 3D powered printer and a lot of metal, Flickenger was able to bring the machine (which could have come straight out of a steampunk novel) to life. An aluminium-encased Nerf gun makes up the body, while an 18V drill battery provides power.

As you can see in the video, it’s not much of a weapon, as it doesn’t really get a lot of distance until you stick something in front of it, at which point it’ll arc… and not even that far. Flickenger does not believe it’s deadly particularly deadly: “This is a toy, not a weapon. It is extremely impractical to use it to hurt people. A baseball bat is more dangerous than this device.”

I don’t know. If you came at me with that thing, wearing that crazy scientist getup… I wouldn’t hang around.

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[imgclear] [HackerFriendly, via io9]

Images: Rob Flickenger