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How I got my laser eye injury

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Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#91

Post by trelane »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #87
NathanielBaking wrote: post #61

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…

I may or may not be aware of hull damage being caused or not caused by a rifle being fired from the flight deck of a ship. My point being, your safety officer had a point.

I think they know that. I read their comment as sarcastic.

Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#92

Post by gus_massa »

aj7 wrote: post #34
gus_massa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a few weeks in a class with a custom infrared -> green laser. The teacher were very hard about glasses, how to crouch looking away from the laser table, close the door and a few more security measures. And later, I had a 5W (0.5W?) green laser at 3 yards pointed at me [1] with some optical equipment bolted to the table in the middle so there was (almost) no possibility that it hit me. The story sounds re…

Crouch? When training technicians, the first thing is, you never ever bend your waist in the laser room, with lasers on. Your head never enters the plane of the laser beams. You do not put your ahead above the laser. You use a piece of copy paper to earache for stray beams near the apparatus. You use an IR viewer to (shock yourself as to how many there are to) find 1064nm stray beams.

I agree. I'm not a native English speaker, so I may have choose the wrong verb. Is "squatting" better?

And with that kind of care, like turn everything off and still be very careful if you have to pick something from the floor.

Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#93

Post by jprete »

trelane wrote: post #91
RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may or may not be aware of hull damage being caused or not caused by a rifle being fired from the flight deck of a ship. My point being, your safety officer had a point.

I think they know that. I read their comment as sarcastic.

It's really, really close though. The kill distance of six miles is what tips me over the edge of reading it as sarcasm.

Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#94

Post by amluto »

amluto wrote: post #44
gus_massa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a few weeks in a class with a custom infrared -> green laser. The teacher were very hard about glasses, how to crouch looking away from the laser table, close the door and a few more security measures. And later, I had a 5W (0.5W?) green laser at 3 yards pointed at me [1] with some optical equipment bolted to the table in the middle so there was (almost) no possibility that it hit me. The story sounds re…

> custom infrared -> green laser Nd:YAG lasers always creep me out. I worked in a lab that had an Nd:YAG with two janky doublers: 1064 -> 532 -> 266 nm. The output energy was supposed to be a few mJ (IIRC), but it was basically zero. So the students operating it took off the second doubler and fired it at a bookend. Nothing (well, nothing visible). Took off the first doubler. After investigation, the zapping sound wa…

Replying to myself:

I just searched Amazon. There are plenty of green “diode” lasers, 532nm, ~100mW, for very little money. I don’t believe that for a second — those are surely crappy frequency doubled Nd:YAG lasers, probably unfiltered (that filter wouldn’t be cheap, and it might fail anyway under that ridiculous power level), and they will blind you when some funny reflection of the, I dunno, 500mW of stray IR light hits your eye.

Now that real name brand laser pointers are mostly gone, if you actually want green, get a 515nm laser or something along those lines. Stay away from 532nm!

Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#95

Post by SkyPuncher »

DannyBee wrote: post #68
mhb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VMC == Vertical Machining Center PSWAATY == Please Say What the Acronyms Are. Thank You.

Usually i do, but there is one acronym in the entire 450 words, and it doesn't really matter to the point what the thing was?

I agree with you.

It's also pretty easy to figure out what you're talking about from context.

Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#96

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

delichon wrote: post #33
steve1977 wrote: post #24

"Are you declaring war on the United States, Bob?" This almost made me spill my tea...

A few years ago I worked in a high rise in an office with a window facing Moffet Airfield. I worried about crashing experimental planes but never thought to worry about being blinded by a stray laser beam. Maybe I'm not paranoid enough.

I remember reading a story of someone photographing a military helicopter (I think), only to find out that the crew apparently considered it funny to point some laser based system (likely a range finder or designator) at the photographer, burning the camera sensor to the point of damage being clearly visible on the sensor itself (not just the pictures).

Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#97

Post by trelane »

0x138d5 wrote: post #89
jmclnx wrote: post #15

One thing I learnt, different glasses for different type lasers, who knew :)

One of the professors in my uni lab had "universal laser goggles". They were regular goggles with a sheet of lead bent over them.

Niiice. Even attenuates those xray lasers!

Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#98

Post by dotancohen »

exe34 wrote: post #78
DannyBee wrote: post #17

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…

> (as for why i have a laser welder - i got it cheap that's how a lot of good stories start

You don't want to hear how I met the ex.

Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#99

Post by ta988 »

amluto wrote: post #45
ta988 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

No, the cameras would probably not survive laser exposure beyond a cat toy pointer level power (and even then I wouldn't bet long exposure of those).

Re: How I got my laser eye injury

#100

Post by tlb »

DannyBee wrote: post #17

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…

Why don't welding/cutting lasers add more divergence with built-in optics? Would it hurt performance? It seems like you could add 1 mrad and it would hardly make a difference at the usual working distance, but spread out to a meter over 1 km, so you can't zap people across town.
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