151–160 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.
Oh yes: https://youtu.be/xNmbvaUzC8Q This is why we can't have nice things
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Hmmm. I'm black, but my wife did anoint me to the position of "honorary redneck" some time ago. Neighbor has stopped with the drone overflights of my property, but still, you're giving me ideas...
Be careful as far as the FAA is concerned drones get the same legal protection as a plane with people in them so messing with them is legally hazardous.
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Ideally you have an enclosed area with interlocks. All of the laser welders support it (and it's the standard way). They make and sell mobile ones that can be pushed around. See, e.g., https://lasersafety.com/barriers/rigid-barriers/ for some examples (I don't know these folks, they just have helpful pictures/listings of kinds of things that exist) If you can't do this, you do need to panel or curtain the ceiling or…
I tig. wear a helmet and have to buy argon every year. this seems like a huge hassle in comparison. is there that big a difference in quality and or range of processes that make it worth it?
Agree with the post above, though. The safety setup for lasers is basically full isolation.
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…
Please provide some more details on your laser welder. Did you import it from China? I want one so bad, but buying them in the USA seems to be 4-5x retail cost in China.
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> plenty of VMC's in the machine shop So now I have to know why Google has a machine shop. Beyond the obvious "why not?"
They make hardware prototypes. When you do that having your own machine shop can lower the iteration time and thus speed up the development. Just from the top of my head: waymo develops their own lidars, akamai obviously needed a ton of machining for the kite, project loon probably had machined components. And those are just the flashy examples we heard about outside of the company. They can have ton of other project…
I think Google and I only think search/ads. I forgot Alphabet has all that other stuff going on.
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…
I'm dying of curiosity how cheap a cheap laser welder can be.
My gut says they'll be for sale at $2-5k within 2 years at the rate things are going.
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 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... I thought the whole point of the Marines was to cause maximal amounts of damage. Are you implying there is a constraint on that? But now I understand why the marines hate the navy: I had a buddy who'd been in the navy and he said they kept the kids busy by cleaning and painting ever…
I thought their point was to expose themselves to maximal amounts of damage.
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At a casino where I was a slot tech we used fiber optics that went into a fiber converter module and then RJ-45. Often I would look at the ends of the fiber connectors to see if they were lit or if the light looked odd. They were quite low in power but I'm surprised at myself that I didn't think of the risk. edit: optics not options
Patch fiber is usually using Class 1 or Class 1M lasers which are entirely safe to look at. Also the light spreads out very rapidly at the end of an unterminated fiber because there's no lens to focus it. So don't hold it directly up against your eye but like a foot away is fine. The lasers are less focused (i.e. cheaper) and the multi-mode fiber is wide so it spreads out very quickly. You can't actually see the IR l…
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…
I get laser safety curtains, but what do you do for reflections off the ceiling? Asking because our makerspace was recently donated a fiber laser welding unit and we don’t yet know best practices for not blinding our membership short of building a completely enclosed separate room for it with door interlocks.
You absolutely, absolutely need this. Do not take chances. "Real estate is expensive" is not an excuse for a blinding hazard to members and visitors of your space.
I've worked with very high powered room-sized laser cutters before and they should all have a full room enclosure.