Yes, no kickback either! I hadn't thought of that...but I'm sure that
will be on the first brochures when they start churning them out.

Scorching? By the time these things come out, all wood will be MDF
and need to be painted anyway :-)

Seriously, though, the *pulsed* lasers that do LASIK eye correction
DON'T SCORCH (they vaporize the wood before it burns)... they could
make a stopped, flat-bottomed hole in wood that looks like that you
made it with a forstner bit on your drill press but with 0.0001"
accuracy and no brad-point left in the bottom if you add a modicum of
CNC technology.

And, if you wanted to thru-drill, that's another good thing... ZERO
TEAR OUT!

One of the best uses is making those damned square mortise holes --
nobody's every pefected that satisfactorily. And even if you do have
the el-cheapo scorching version of the laser, we don't care a lot
inside a joint.

The price of anything initially (in "prototype" quantities) is quite
costly... but you can go to the dollar store and get a laser pointer
now for a buck... when they first came out they were a hundred bucks!
And don't forget, with a pulsed laser, the power is concentrated in a
short burst resulting in *much* lower wattage.

It might seem dangerous by today's standards, but again, look at the
LASIK lasers... they're a foot from your eyeball pointed directly at
your eyeball!

Brad nailers and Hilti guns have quite a "range" too, and probably
seemed scary when they were first invented.

In rec.woodworking PC Paul wrote:
Well, you can see how this would kill lots of industries overnight, so
they'll never let us have them.

I'll bite.

Cutting wood by essentially burning it away is a bit different to cutting
metal... I guess for studwork a bit of scorching wouldn't matter so much,
but for fine furniture? No thanks.

Also, the systems I've looked at in a quick google (up to 450W CO2 Lasers)
can only cut a max of 1" thickness. And a 450W laser is a hefty bit of kit
with a hefty price tag. Although I see EBay has a 3500W laser setup on
Buy-it-now for only $249,995.

Not to mention that saw cutting is only dangerous to people within reach of
the blade plus a bit for kickback. A high powered cutting laser would be a
danger to anyone in a pretty wide range, even if it was initially contained
inside the workshop. Want your dozy neghbour to have one?