81–90 of 378 posts
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There's a killer Neal Stephenson plotline in here somewhere. Redneck protagonist zapping enemy drones with a modified laser welder.
I had to look it up, because I thought that was what "Reason" was in Snowcrash. I was mistaken: Reason was a railgun.
Safety guys always ruin the fun. I was in the Marine Corps and every time we got to test some new piece of gear the safety officer was like "No, you can't live fire it off the flight deck of the ship" or "No, not here, that village is down wind of the dust you will kick up when it goes off." No, that has a kill distance of 6 miles, you have to fire it into a hill." Blah, blah, blah. So after I got out I joined the Na…
It's all fun and games until you walk in front of a live AESA radar and sterilize yourself.
It wouldn't be hard to get some asphalt into the lab, but if you don't know how to pour asphalt...or swing a hammer, you're gonna haul the tool you know to the asphalt
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I'm dying of curiosity how cheap a cheap laser welder can be.
There's a killer Neal Stephenson plotline in here somewhere. Redneck protagonist zapping enemy drones with a modified laser welder.
This is why we can't have nice things
So I laser weld, and beyond my own PPE, interlocks (gun won't fire if it's not touching metal, etc), the most important part of the whole setup is laser safety curtains. Because it's a 2500 watt laser, if i didn't have laser safety curtains , the relections/etc could very easily blind someone at a fairly long distance. The NOHD (nominal ocular hazard distance) is something like 10km (2500 watt laser, 0.06mm spot size…
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The guy was listed as a "sales engineer" which on first glance is the worst sort of oxymoron, everybody knows engineers make terrible salesmen[1]. But perhaps it could work, just take your sleaziest engineer, put them through an intensive indoctrination in chicanery and lies and you get a salesman who almost knows what he is talking about. 1. How do you know if the guy trying to sell you something is the engineer. Th…
My dad was such an engineer doing sales, of industrial components. Grew up on a farm, engineering degree, very honest type churchgoer and family man, and in his spare time DIY projects like a classic engineer type. I'm sure he'd know when something would or wouldn't work, and would candidly tell the customer about any problems or risks. (In this case, maybe honest as much as an engineer personally bothered by design…
Safety guys always ruin the fun. I was in the Marine Corps and every time we got to test some new piece of gear the safety officer was like "No, you can't live fire it off the flight deck of the ship" or "No, not here, that village is down wind of the dust you will kick up when it goes off." No, that has a kill distance of 6 miles, you have to fire it into a hill." Blah, blah, blah. So after I got out I joined the Na…
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That and different glasses depending on how you use that laser... Because some lasers can do variable wavelength.
I’ve seen some references to the universal laser glasses: Apple Vision Pro!
One thing I learnt, different glasses for different type lasers, who knew :)
They were regular goggles with a sheet of lead bent over them.
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The sales guy set up the entire rig on his own? And no other engineers in the lab stopped to ask what he was doing? I know some places have poor safety culture, but this is a “laser company”. Basic laser safety should be drilled into them from day 1 and every day after. When I worked in an optics lab, we had interlocks on the doors that switched on with the power supply running the experiment and a sign outside indic…
The guy was listed as a "sales engineer" which on first glance is the worst sort of oxymoron, everybody knows engineers make terrible salesmen[1]. But perhaps it could work, just take your sleaziest engineer, put them through an intensive indoctrination in chicanery and lies and you get a salesman who almost knows what he is talking about. 1. How do you know if the guy trying to sell you something is the engineer. Th…