It’s a rare person who can pick up a cheap laser pointer and not wield it like ... Part of the challenge is that the optical fiber inside the cladding is often very small — as few as 9 microns.

And to be sure, the fiber laser that [Marco Reps] tears down in the video below was as harmless as a kitten when he got it, thanks to its output optics having been unceremoniously shorn from the ...