Lights and lenses, the poor mans laser?

Hi Folks,

Someone was telling me about something that happened at one of those
"spooky stores" where they sell all sorts of crystal-waving mystical
tat, that got me wondering. In the case of the store they had a display
case with metal-halide and spot lights lighting it up, and were
show-casing crystal balls, on black velvet. Anyway, the store burnt down :)

This got me thinking, as an alternative to a laser, for cutting things
like insulating material, pvc, fabric, latex sheet etc, is it not
possible to constuct a very poor-mans laser out of a few metal halide
lamps and a lense or two? Beam quality would not be a terrible issue, so
long as it cut the relatively thin material (and we poured a bit of
argon over the material as we went so as not to repeat the stores
mistake). Is this viable, would some lenses work better than others? Any
suggestions?

The idea of a cheap (small) laser alternative XY table seems appealing...

Thanks!
Abby (http://www.silverkatt.co.uk)