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, divergence is very very small). The actual hazard distance is shorter, but still, kinda crazy.
(as for why i have a laser welder - i got it cheap and besides the downsides above, it is very easy to weld ~anything without much skill. A person who has never welded in their life can weld sheet metal and have it come out basically perfect in 5 minutes)
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.
My electronics mentor worked at 3M in the 80s. One of his coworkers thought it would be funny to prank him by asking him to look into a piece of equipment with something like a binocular microscope that the prankster had rigged to flash laser light at the sample. (I'm not sure what the equipment was, maybe something to do with chip lithography or looking at the surface of a magnetic platter.)
Somehow 3M was able to get out of compensating him for this workplace injury even though, if an ophthalmologist were to give him an eye exam (he tells me) they can literally read lithography writing (albeit backwards) burned in scar tissue on his retina. IIRC the prankster was never appropriately disciplined either.
Like OP it mostly affects/affected his peripheral vision and he just ignored it much of the time, but as he's gotten older his eyesight in general has gotten worse such that he can no longer compensate for it.
I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect my Hole In My Eye[0] came from being 30 years old (I'm 46 now) and saying "look, this laser pointer is so low power, I can shine it in my eye to no ill effect!".
I’m not saying it didn’t happen as described, but this really kinda reads like the “Bald eagle named Albert Einstein flew into the classroom” copypasta…
DannyBee ·89 days ago
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, divergence is very very small). The actual hazard distance is shorter, but still, kinda crazy.
(as for why i have a laser welder - i got it cheap and besides the downsides above, it is very easy to weld ~anything without much skill. A person who has never welded in their life can weld sheet metal and have it come out basically perfect in 5 minutes)
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NathanielBaking ·89 days ago
So after I got out I joined the National Guard.
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phaedrus ·88 days ago
Somehow 3M was able to get out of compensating him for this workplace injury even though, if an ophthalmologist were to give him an eye exam (he tells me) they can literally read lithography writing (albeit backwards) burned in scar tissue on his retina. IIRC the prankster was never appropriately disciplined either.
Like OP it mostly affects/affected his peripheral vision and he just ignored it much of the time, but as he's gotten older his eyesight in general has gotten worse such that he can no longer compensate for it.
dmd ·89 days ago
[0] https://dmd.3e.org/a-hole-in-my-eye/
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zoky ·89 days ago
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