I've now got it fully working on batteries in the hand held gun shape.  I added the skull on the end to fit the Halloween theme. I hope this can give people ideas on how to use it and add on their own cool designs. In the video below It is running one of the special FX pulse modes so it gives that sound and a nice spark effect. It is possible to program all sorts of pulse patters for different sound effects and spark shapes.

I will make the laser cut design files available once I finalised everything so hopefully it is easy for people to modify and use for their own cool sci fi prop weapons. 

The controller is Arduino compatible and has breakouts so it is simple to integrate some awesome WS2812 / neopixel type effects into it too. The SSTC driver is easy to pulse width modulate and can therefore even support full PCM audio output. This means you could record laser sound effects and have them actually made by the plasma output. I'm really looking forward to releasing all the parts and code for this and seeing what you creative folk will come up with!