[HN Gopher] How I got my laser eye injury
___________________________________________________________________
How I got my laser eye injury
Author : omnibrain
Score : 583 points
Date : 2024-08-01 10:25 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.funraniumlabs.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.funraniumlabs.com)
| RA2lover wrote:
| I wonder what happened to literally everyone else present at this
| situation. That's beyond "Yikes!" territory.
| MeteorMarc wrote:
| Yes, I also dislike the culture in which this can be called a
| funny story. Such culture will cause more incidents. Worked in
| a laser lab for 5 years without incident in a time when eye
| safety goggles were not used for visible light.
| ta988 wrote:
| Sometimes a funny story is one that helps you remember about
| safety.
| ordu wrote:
| Yeah, emotions are a positive factor for a memories
| forming. Add some emotions to a fact, and it will be
| remembered better and for longer. Some things are
| remembered for life without any repetition, and mostly it
| happens for things that trigger your emotions.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| No. That only says something about you, not "the culture".
| It's incredibly common to laugh at the absolute absurdity of
| a situation. It doesn't mean that people are making light of
| it. It doesn't mean that they don't grok how serious it is.
| They just react differently to you.
| MeteorMarc wrote:
| I agree there is more to it than yes/no making a joke of an
| incident. I associate it with a macho culture in which
| people do not feel safe to speak up in case of unsafe
| circumstances. Same for IT security.
| bbarnett wrote:
| If the Germans can joke about it, anyone can.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ_86lxP36I
| tivert wrote:
| This version of Forklift Driver Klaus is much clearer:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJYOkZz6Dck
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > in a time when eye safety goggles were not used for visible
| light.
|
| Also Yikes. Even with my low(ish) 1w-5w handhelds, it's self-
| evident that eye protection is needed when the beam travels
| less than a few yards.
| zoky wrote:
| 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...
| relaxing wrote:
| 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 indicating
| which wavelengths were operating.
| ben_w wrote:
| Mm.
|
| Should be, isn't.
|
| I've heard of one place that had a class IV laser mounted on
| a robot arm in a public area, which turned itself off when
| the arm happened to flail in exactly the right way to hit its
| own emergency stop button.
| ta988 wrote:
| I have seen a drunk employee wrestling with a moving
| industrial robotic arm trying to "fix it" after having
| disabled the numerous safeties with screwdrivers. This was at
| a major car manufacturer plant. Do not underestimate the
| horrible situations people can put themselves in.
| p_l wrote:
| Sometimes you fight and curse the volkswagen-special VKRC
| safety circuits.
|
| And sometimes you think what kind of shenanigans might
| happen and why it might be better to have complex safety
| interlocks that mate with entire automation cell
| controls...
| hotsauceror wrote:
| A relative of mine works with assembly-line robots at heavy
| equipment manufacturers. He told me that while they were
| calibrating a new robot that was used to move axles for
| industrial mining dump trucks, a miscalculation caused the
| robot to fling a 800 lb axle through the air like a
| marching band baton.
| aftbit wrote:
| Now that I'd pay to see. If that happened where I worked,
| I would be so tempted to run the program again with my
| phone camera out. After telling everyone down-range to
| get lost of course.
|
| Now would I do it? No... definitely not, as long as the
| demon on my right shoulder was being quiet that day.
| rkachowski wrote:
| It's pretty crazy that the sales guy was able to connect the
| water cooling and power with enough hosing and cables to
| bring it outside, as well as know how to operate the device
| enough to activate it - but couldn't correctly point it _at
| the ground_ and burn the paint off of the street without
| melting through a car.
|
| But forgetting that, what are the core safety issues
| described? I get the direct exposure to unprotected eyes
| damage, but there's discussion of infra red reflections
| endangering nearby children + aircraft + casus belli with the
| US army.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| The story says he did point it at the ground, but a) it was
| reflecting off the reflective paint they were aiming at and
| b) towards the end the laser was badly misaligned.
| tpmoney wrote:
| "Sales engineer" sounds like one of those positions that
| would be regularly setting up demos for customers and have
| access to the equipment and basic operating procedures.
|
| "Could we use this to burn paint off the road" sounds
| exactly like the sort of question a person doing a demo
| might say "I don't see why not, let's try it" to.
|
| While with deliberate thought about it, the fact that road
| markings are retro-reflective is obvious, but it's not
| something you would necessarily consider immediately, since
| it's called "paint" and almost all paint you encounter in
| the world is not retro-reflective.
|
| For the rest of it, my reading of the story is multiple
| things happened here:
|
| 1) They initially aimed the IR laser at the paint on the
| ground. The paint being retro-reflective the laser damaged
| itself in about an half hour and stopped producing
| consistent results, just occasional spots of results.
|
| 2) The sales person rather than halting the demo to get
| someone else to take a look at what was malfunctioning
| continued to fire the laser after making various
| adjustments not realizing that because the laser had been
| damaged it was firing not at the ground anymore, but at the
| car a few spaces away.
|
| 3) They'd been messing with the laser after malfunctioning
| since before the VP parked their car, so there's
| possibility they were sending lasers in the direction of
| the other building, so that's one issue which would have
| been bad enough on its own but...
|
| 4) At some point the VP parked their car in the path
| between the laser and the building. As they continued to
| mess with the malfunctioning laser, they burned through the
| paint on the side of the car, exposing the bare metal
| underneath.
|
| 5) The bare metal is also highly reflective, but because
| it's not retro-reflective the problem is now you had
| completely uncontrolled reflections. The ones that went
| backwards had nothing to stop them since there was only a
| fence and field between the lot and the school. And the
| ones that went up obviously also had nothing to stop them
| since they were outside.
|
| 6) Because of the unknown detections and quantity of
| reflection, in addition to getting all the potentially
| exposed employees and customers checked out, the company
| would also have to make advisory calls (at a minimum) to
| the school and the local airports and military
| installations.
|
| Whether those schools and planes were actually in danger or
| not could not be said with certainty, but the point was
| less "oh know we're terrorists now" and more "this was a
| huge screw up, and I need to impress on you why it was
| bigger than just breaking company property or not wearing
| your safety gear"
| petsfed wrote:
| I think this is all a good illustration of why "Bob" was
| (supposedly) fired at the end of the story.
|
| A _good_ sales engineer knows a lot about the product
| within its normal operating envelope, but _especially_
| knows a lot about the boundaries of "normal operation".
| Bob's very first response to "can this thing do a thing
| [that Bob should know is outside of its normal
| operations]?" should have been to go ask the kind of
| engineer who is involved in defining "normal". And either
| the capability is investigated (and, if plausible,
| eventually a "safe" demo is put together, and maybe the
| definition of "normal" is expanded), or its revealed that
| it won't work, and that's that. In either case, the rest
| of the situation never happens, provided Bob is actually
| good at the engineering side of "sales engineer".
| relaxing wrote:
| Not operating in a controlled environment, no curtains to
| block stray reflections, not ensuring your optic path is
| stable and clear of obstructions and reflective objects.
| Doesn't sound like they had a beam block around for safety,
| nor did they first use a lower power visible laser to
| simulate beam path.
| unkeptbarista wrote:
| I find this basics of this story believable. I worked at a
| place that manufactured IR lasers, and where the owner (the
| "Doctor" as we called him) set up similiar impromptu
| demonstrations that went awry. Thankfully no one was injured,
| but some random piece of equipment was damaged by the
| reflected beam.
| protocolture wrote:
| Sales Engineer = Knows enough to be dangerous.
|
| Sometimes a good sales engineer can tell you all about then
| undocumented feature you need to get something delivered.
| somat wrote:
| 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. They will tell you in excruciating detail every
| flaw and design mistake in the thing and how they should have
| designed it better. Savor this moment, look past the terrible
| sales pitch and buy from them, for you have been gifted that
| elusive thing, the engineer.
| neilv wrote:
| 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 flaws.)
|
| I've also seen a different kind of engineer in sales, where
| they're paired long-term with salespeople. They sit in on
| sales meetings as a technical expert, and also do things
| like customizations and integrations. I suppose the
| presence of the salesperson helps suppress the engineer's
| inclination to start riffing on every flaw, but the pairing
| retains the engineer ability to help the customer be
| successful with the product.
| somat wrote:
| Yeah, I am a bit rough on sales, but it is critical to
| doing business. And a good saleman is a wonderful find,
| talking with someone who is knowledgeable and honest
| about the product is great.
| refulgentis wrote:
| You're littering via middle school group stereotypes for
| professions.
|
| You're walking it back a bit by saying you're a bit rough
| on sales, but what you actually wrote is engineers are
| bad at sales.
|
| Sales engineer is a well-populated role, and they do
| their jobs as expected.
|
| On average, an engineer will be worse at sales than a
| "pure salesman", but that's simply specialization in
| action. Can't get better at what you don't have an
| opportunity to practice. We all can do pretty much
| whatever we want if we put our minds to it.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| Sales engineers are very common if you are selling complex
| industrial products. At a certain point of complexity,
| selling a product and designing its integration with the
| customer kind of bridge. You need a deep understanding of
| the product and process involved to be able to sell it.
| elzbardico wrote:
| With highly technical products usually you have at least two
| guys working on a account:
|
| The salesman, who deals with the business guys on the other
| side, the folks who will actually sign the check. The sales
| engineer, that deal with the guys who will actually use the
| product, is able to understand their requirements and come up
| with ways the product can fullfil those, provide Proofs of
| Concept, demos and initial training for those guys on the
| other side that will give the final ok to the business
| people: 'this will work for us, you can sign the check if you
| want"
| mpalmer wrote:
| Never let facts get in the way of a good story. The build-up is
| great (VP's car, elementary school, military base) and the
| punchline is funny, but it's just a bit too perfect ("and
| what's above us?", cue clouds). Even the name Bob sounds like
| it's been chosen for comedy.
|
| It's clearly a mostly true story that's been refined and
| polished over the years.
| rob74 wrote:
| It's entirely possible that "Bob" is a generic name (using
| $SALES_GUY, like he uses $LASER_COMPANY and $FACILITY_GUY,
| would have been too repetitive).
|
| ...or the guy was really called Bob.
| trelane wrote:
| Also, the guy had enough happen to him. He doesn't need his
| actual name put in the story. One might hope that in the
| intervening 25 years he would have improved, especially
| after such an expensive lesson.
| foehrenwald wrote:
| reads like a BOFH story
| gadders wrote:
| Yeah, I thought it sounded a bit too good to be true as
| well...
| cududa wrote:
| Was curious so I looked it up - Jose Antonio Vargas
| Elementary School is right by Moffet Field. The school also
| abuts an industrial park that fits the description.
|
| One of the current tenants there is Volvo Innovation Lab,
| which I imagine does laser testing. I have no idea if
| buildings need certain certifications for working with
| lasers, so I mention that tidbit.
|
| As well, that office park has 16 buildings in it, by my
| count.
|
| The pieces of this story very much so line up.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Yeah like I said I'm sure it's mostly true. I just don't
| necessarily buy that he had a comedian's delivery on the
| day in question
| gus_massa wrote:
| 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 real.
|
| [1] If all the bolted devices in the middle magically fall
| down, the laser would have hit my belly, not my eyes. So it's
| important to crouch looking away, just in case.
| aj7 wrote:
| 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.
| gus_massa wrote:
| 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.
| amluto wrote:
| > 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 was the paint vaporizing off
| a computer at the other end of the lab, because the beam was
| actually scooting just past the bookend. 1064 nm is almost
| the worst wavelength you can work with. (Okay, 233nm is
| probably worse, but the available energy with a setup like
| this is much lower.)
|
| I have a green laser pointer, and I made a point of buying a
| _diode_ laser. It's a slightly different color than 532, its
| battery life is better, but, critically, there is no way it
| could malfunction or be sloppily constructed to leak infrared
| light.
| amluto wrote:
| 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!
| entropie wrote:
| I have a friend with multiple green and red lasers, some
| from aliexpress.
|
| Years ago when the hype wasnt really there he visited me
| and wanted to show off. I have 3 dogs and I really like
| this kind of tech but I forbid it to turn that thing on
| near me, especially in my flat. Even if they are directed
| away, the chance of unpredictable reflections is just too
| high for a bit of fun.
| cyberax wrote:
| > (Okay, 233nm is probably worse, but the available energy
| with a setup like this is much lower.)
|
| How do you get 233nm lasers?!?
| fsh wrote:
| Yeah, the story contains some obvious bullshit. There is no way
| in hell a flashlamp-pumped Nd:YAG laser could cut through a
| piece of steel. With typical ~Hz repetition rate and ~J pulse
| energy, the average power is only around 1 W. This is three to
| five orders of magnitude lower than typical welding lasers.
| This could burn some paint or engrave metal, but burning
| through a wheel well and brake line is completely ridiculous.
| mistercow wrote:
| Maybe they meant the plastic wheel well liner? I don't know
| if that makes sense, I'm just googling around looking at Jeep
| Cherokee images.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It's just there for flair. :)
| xiphmont wrote:
| He didn't claim it cut through steel, JGCs have polymer wheel
| wells and brake lines like most modern cars.
| neilv wrote:
| As I read through it, it does sound like an apocryphal old
| story, since too many of the details are too perfect setups for
| the teller.
|
| Then again, occasionally real life really does happen
| unbelieveably, including when fudge-ups are involved.
|
| Maybe what's most unbelieveable is that, to the extent the
| story tells, the only known injured person was the laser safety
| officer.
|
| Presumably the safety person was partly in the loop on some
| other injuries, but maybe they're NDA'd on that, yet not NDA'd
| on mentioning the incident. Or, maybe an incident like that was
| kept very quiet by a company, and injured people never knew how
| they got injured.
|
| Then there's this:
|
| > _It has been brought to my attention that I have never
| actually written this story down before, merely told it in
| person to many students for valuable lessons and also for
| laughs over cocktails._
|
| Did they only give verbal reports and verbal
| depositions/testimony? Never wrote up a report for internal use
| or for professional publication?
|
| "Laughs over cocktails" could mean finding humor in the
| ridiculousness of disaster, and taking a battle scar in stride.
| Could also be a hint that the entire story is a
| fabricated/embellished/appropriated story, like people often
| tell recreationally when drinking, and understood in that
| context for what it is.
| kragen wrote:
| possibly his boss asked him to not write up the report
| neilv wrote:
| Yes, I don't want to speculate, but would hope that, for
| whatever happened, the affected people were notified, and
| all the appropriate safety officer processes were followed
| up on.
|
| Or, the story might have started a bit like when grandkids
| ask grandpa how he got that arm injury, and instead of
| telling the troubling story about shrapnel in the war, or
| the car crash, he tongue in cheek tells a fantastic tall
| tale of fishing, when along comes a bear who wanted to eat
| his fish, chock full of lessons.
|
| That could've been a goal with students: if one ran out of
| real-world case studies to drive home laser safety
| practices, a semi-plausible, if over-the-top, narrative of
| how a not-unlikely cavalier mistake could become a
| clusterfudge, with the story of course hitting all the
| safety practices they were just told about.
|
| There would normally be verbal cues as to the kind of
| story, and there'd be the context of telling, both of which
| are lost in blog posts.
| tpmoney wrote:
| > Did they only give verbal reports and verbal
| depositions/testimony? Never wrote up a report for internal
| use or for professional publication?
|
| I read that line as being in the context of the authors blog.
| As in "I've referenced this here before, and told the story
| to people in person, but never written out the story here on
| my blog." Not literally saying that this is the first time in
| history any part of this story was committed to some form of
| the written word.
| paulluuk wrote:
| This was a great read, thanks for sharing!
| sethammons wrote:
| That is a heck of a cocktail story. A bit more terrifying than I
| expected. As the safety officer, I wonder what new policies they
| put into place after this.
| pja wrote:
| "Do not let salesweasels anywhere near the bright shiny things"
| hopefully.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _On closer inspection, we later leaned that the Quanta-Ray had
| burnt through the wheel well and cut the brake line._
|
| The I guess they were lucky that they weren't aiming in the
| general direction of the fuel tank, or that the "experiment" was
| stopped before burning through it?
| dwighttk wrote:
| Moral of the story is: make sure and tag the safety officer when
| you're being stupid so _he_ can make sure and inform all of the
| correct people.
| aj7 wrote:
| Just for giggles, who owned Spectra-Physics at the time?
| igleria wrote:
| how do people like Bob get a job in the first place?
| myrmidon wrote:
| - Familiar enough with product to set up customer demonstration
| on his own with minimal help from enigneering
|
| - Shows initiative by exploring novel applications with
| customers
|
| - Expertly alleviates doubts & hesitation in customers
|
| :P
|
| Honestly, apart from blatant disregard for safety culture, that
| is not a bad salesperson at all.
|
| Without additional info, I would honestly put the blame mostly
| on the company, because instilling a certain respect for
| dangerous products should be part of company culture and
| employee training, you just can't expect fresh hires to come
| with all the common sense baked in...
| jmclnx wrote:
| One thing I learnt, different glasses for different type lasers,
| who knew :)
| ta988 wrote:
| That and different glasses depending on how you use that
| laser... Because some lasers can do variable wavelength.
| amluto wrote:
| I've seen some references to the universal laser glasses:
| Apple Vision Pro!
| ta988 wrote:
| 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).
| amluto wrote:
| That's fine. If I worked in a room with a laser and I
| screwed up and hit my face, frying an Apple Vision Pro
| seems like a pretty small price to pay. My _eyes_ will be
| fine.
|
| And the Apple Vision Pro works against tunable lasers,
| lasers of unknown frequency, flashlamps, etc.
| rtkwe wrote:
| They'd still protect your little human eyes. If you
| wanted to use them as safety glasses normally you'd want
| their cameras to be easily replaceable but they would
| function as safety goggles for short periods until the
| camera caught a stray beam.
| gabrielhidasy wrote:
| Cameras are cheap, eyes are expensive.
|
| Ok, the Vision pro cameras are probably very expensive
| (mostly because I doubt you can just switch them with new
| ones). Maybe put a bag over it and a Pi camera on the
| outside? Can you live-stream to a Vision Pro?
| cyberax wrote:
| Dye lasers are the worst. You now have _two_ (or more)
| wavelengths to shield against. Bonus points if one of them is
| in IR.
|
| That's probably how I got my eye damage - a small hole in the
| retina of one eye.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Why can't there be glasses with the different types layered
| together into one?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Then you can't see anything.
|
| They're narrowband filters. A welding mask would be a
| wideband filter, but is much harder to work with when it's
| engaged.
| fabian2k wrote:
| Because if you want to cover all possible lasers you'll block
| out the visible spectrum as well and won't see anything.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| You can get some overlap tho. I have 520nm goggles that
| tone down 465nm.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's mostly because it's tough to get a perfect notch
| filter in the visible spectrum but you'd never want to
| use the 520nm with a 465nm unless it was low enough power
| the fuzzy edge of the filter knocked it's power down
| enough to be safe.
| 0x138d5 wrote:
| One of the professors in my uni lab had "universal laser
| goggles".
|
| They were regular goggles with a sheet of lead bent over them.
| trelane wrote:
| Niiice. Even attenuates those xray lasers!
| DannyBee wrote:
| 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)
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I'm dying of curiosity how cheap a cheap laser welder can be.
| mdorazio wrote:
| A quick search is showing me new machines in the $7k range.
| You could probably pick up a used one for a few thousand
| less. This is cheaper than I would have thought, honestly - a
| decent full MIG rig is not exactly cheap.
| DannyBee wrote:
| They are coming down in price very quickly.
|
| The materials cost is really not very high (no idea on the
| laser itself, but the rest is easily <1k. Probably <500.).
| The R&D cost was probably very high to start (but also
| coming down).
| supermatt wrote:
| I don't have one yet so cant really advise on quality, but I
| was recently looking and you can pick up a 2.5kW laser welder
| from about $15k. They are slightly cheaper (around 12k) from
| alibaba, but then you will be looking at import duties,
| warranty complexities, etc
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Yeah, that's the problem with some of the more expensive
| Alibaba/Aliexpress stuff. The list price is attractive, but
| once you add in all the extras like duties, transportation
| from the port of entry to your location, warranty
| difficulty etc., there's not much price difference from
| heading over to the local Kubota dealership.
|
| Still, some of those little tracked tractors on TikTok are
| interesting. If I could somehow raise enough money to start
| importing them, I'm sure I could sell quite a few.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| A lot of folks find those little chineese tractors at
| auctions in the US. There are folks who handle all the
| import and then resell them. Can be a great deal but many
| of them need some mods, like better cooling, to really
| shine.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| There's a killer Neal Stephenson plotline in here somewhere.
| Redneck protagonist zapping enemy drones with a modified
| laser welder.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| I had to look it up, because I thought that was what
| "Reason" was in Snowcrash.
|
| I was mistaken: Reason was a railgun.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The weird part of reason is it is also (in the family of)
| a mini gun with it's multiple rotating barrels.
| zokier wrote:
| Oh yes: https://youtu.be/xNmbvaUzC8Q
|
| This is why we can't have nice things
| btbuildem wrote:
| There's no way this stuff isn't giving the secret service
| nightmares.
|
| This guy set ablaze the inside of a vehicle through
| closed windows from a significant distance.
| dgacmu wrote:
| It's rare to have such a clear illustration of the
| difference between intelligence and wisdom.
| trelane wrote:
| Almost a different Funranium post:
| https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2022/12/choose-your-own-
| radiat...
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| 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...
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Go get em cowboy!
| rtkwe wrote:
| 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.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I know. Hence the laser: blind the camera first and they
| can't prove that it didn't mysteriously drop out of the
| sky as soon as it passed the property line.
| bzax wrote:
| I feel obliged to mention that this does feature
| prominently in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars trilogy. The
| single most important piece of infrastructure on Mars is a
| space elevator, but not everyone on the planet is happy
| with how the owners of the space elevator are running
| things.
| DannyBee wrote:
| So, to clarify - what i have is a very nice IPG lightweld
| 1500 XR. They are normally not cheap (30k), and are _very_
| nice and well thought out safety wise.
|
| One of the fun parts when i lived in the bay area was that as
| companies got acquired, they didn't know what to do with the
| stuff they had before acquisition that isn't needed anymore,
| and it either sits in a warehouse, or gets auctioned off (or
| both!)
|
| So for example, at one point, Google (after acquiring terra
| bella and some other companies) had like 5 or 6 very nice 5
| axis VMC's sitting around collecting dust. Each was worth
| well over 250k. They already had plenty of VMC's in the
| machine shop, etc, and didn't need these, and it was not
| worth the trouble to sell them. At least back then.
|
| In my case, I was able to get this welder for way less than
| half price.
|
| The lightweld's have come down in price over the years, and
| that will keep happening.
|
| They are pretty much the most expensive laser welders though,
| you can easily get one for 10k these days.
|
| The truth is, however, if you go cheaper than this, what
| often what gets overlooked is safety. So some of them in the
| lowest price range don't even require you touch the gun to
| metal before letting you fire, etc.
|
| All of them can weld the same, so if you go looking, look at
| other things too.
|
| THe other thing - one of the nice things about laser welding
| is that it's improving very fast. So similar to fiber,
| running multiple types of lasers or optics in the cable is
| not particularly more difficult than running one. They just
| add more fibers (it's not quite the only issue, but you get
| the point).
|
| Why does this matter? Because it means you can run another
| laser or something to monitor the weld and adjust parameters
| on the fly. Which lightweld and others are starting to do. So
| if you are moving the gun too fast/slowly, or got the power
| wrong or whatever, it will compensate automatically
|
| This probably won't ever happen on mig/tig. The lasers are
| heavily computer controlled already, this just adds a
| feedback loop.
|
| It also enables real time certification of a weld - see
| https://www.ipgphotonics.com/products/laser-weld-measurement
| for an example (this is a separate product, but you get the
| idea)
|
| In any case, my take would be - if you want to play with them
| as a hobbyist, or have too much money, they are cool
| Otherwise i'd wait ~5 years and what you get will probably be
| 5-10x better for the same price.
| mhb wrote:
| VMC == Vertical Machining Center
|
| PSWAATY == Please Say What the Acronyms Are. Thank You.
| DannyBee wrote:
| 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?
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I agree with you.
|
| It's also pretty easy to figure out what you're talking
| about from context.
| mhb wrote:
| It's the second post in which he did this. And how should
| anyone know whether it's important to know what it means
| without knowing what it means?
| digging wrote:
| If the definition doesn't matter, better to use a more
| generic term than a more specific/cryptic one.
| mhb wrote:
| OK. Thanks for the informative post. Don't want to
| discourage you from more.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| > _PSWAATY_
|
| I'm keeping that one.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _So some of them in the lowest price range don 't even
| require you touch the gun to metal before letting you fire,
| etc._
|
| Are you able to attach them to the heads of sharks?
| DannyBee wrote:
| If you can get them to stay still long enough, maybe.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > 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?"
| antoinealb wrote:
| Google as a company manufactures hardware, it makes sense
| to have a machine shop for prototypes.
| psd1 wrote:
| Google was founded by burners who want to take cool shit
| to the desert.
| krisoft wrote:
| 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
| projects which didn't get to the point where we heard
| about them but required hardware prototyping.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Duh! Of course!
|
| I think Google and I only think search/ads. I forgot
| Alphabet has all that other stuff going on.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| So does Alphabet.
| DannyBee wrote:
| Lots of reasons. Prototyping consumer goods of various
| sorts, etc.
| throwup238 wrote:
| IIRC it was started in earnest for Nexus phone prototypes
| in the early 2010s.
| abakker wrote:
| https://www.everlastgenerators.com/catalog/laser-welders this
| is probably the easiest one to buy from a reputable (non
| alibaba) company. its $17k, so not "cheap", but hardly
| expensive.
|
| My gut says they'll be for sale at $2-5k within 2 years at
| the rate things are going.
| sph wrote:
| NOHD = Nominal Ocular Hazard Distance
| DannyBee wrote:
| Yes. Sorry for not expanding it. I edited it to expand it.
|
| For others:
|
| The NOHD is really a nominal distance. It's just the distance
| at which the beam falls below the maximum permissible
| exposure.
|
| The 50% eye hazard distance (ED50) is 31.6% of this number.
| That is, if the NOHD is 100m, then at 31.6 meters you have a
| 50% chance of causing a medically detectable change to the
| eye. It's also worth noting - the beam power at this 31.6%
| distance is 10x, not 3x, what it is at the NOHD.
|
| For laser welding, the spot beam is small (60um) which is one
| reason the NOHD distance is so high.
|
| For reference, a laser pointer is like 1.5mm, so this is 25x
| smaller.
|
| It also doesn't help that the lasers used are all
| ~1060-1070nm wavelength and so invisible as well :)
| netsharc wrote:
| Somehow your comment reminds me of Tech Ingredients grilling a
| burger with laser:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VmITd0dKAo
| exe34 wrote:
| > (as for why i have a laser welder - i got it cheap
|
| that's how a lot of good stories start
| dotancohen wrote:
| You don't want to hear how I met the ex.
| elif wrote:
| 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.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Cheaper ones often skip safety features like interlocks to so
| be careful.
| yard2010 wrote:
| I wouldn't get one from China, no matter what the price is.
| Money can't buy eyesight, not in this case at least
| tlb wrote:
| 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.
| queuebert wrote:
| Whatever refracts the light will have to stand up to the beam
| for long periods of time. Maybe it's a materials science
| problem.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| If it's a 1-micron wavelength laser with a 60 micron radius
| spot, the divergence can't be much less than about 5.7 mrad
| half angle. What makes eye safety tricky is just that 2.5
| million milliwatts is a lot of power. Even when you spread it
| out some.
| notelectronic wrote:
| 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.
| DannyBee wrote:
| 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 use laser absorption coating or other things.
|
| There are places that also just use reflection sensors that
| detect reflection on the ceiling and trigger (again, machines
| already support handling this). I have heard this works very
| well but have no direct experience with it.
|
| All that said, reflection off ceiling is more uncommon for
| practical reasons (The angle at which you hold the gun to the
| piece, the fact that ceiling directed angles often become
| back reflection into the gun which it already detects, etc).
|
| They already detect very high reflection as well.
|
| For a makerspace, one of the issues you will have is that
| people will likely want to try to weld copper and aluminum a
| lot, both of which are highly IR reflective.
|
| If you said "You can only weld steel and iron" you would
| eliminate a very high percent of reflection in the first
| place.
|
| Here's a basic chart that looks right:
| https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tomasz-
| Kurzynowski/publ...
|
| For a 1064nm laser, you can see Al or Cu is going to reflect
| a lot of the energy, while steel/iron are still off the graph
| high in absorption
| convolvatron wrote:
| 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?
| abakker wrote:
| its the operator skill part when dealing with thin sheet
| metal. It just works better / easier / faster for thin
| stuff, where in TIG, that's the high-skill work that
| everyone pays big bucks for.
|
| Agree with the post above, though. The safety setup for
| lasers is basically full isolation.
| convolvatron wrote:
| seems like its more cost effective to just stay on or
| above 20ga unless you're really high volume or you really
| need the weight savings
| hinkley wrote:
| I know one of the reasons we wanted pico-second and
| shorter pulsed lasers is that they can cut material with
| little to no damage of the neighboring material. There
| was a demo that I read about when this was all brand
| spanking new research, where they claimed that a laser
| scalpel causes no heat damage to tissue outside of a
| cell's breadth from the contact point.
| cyberax wrote:
| That's how LASIC and PRK work, after all!
| bozhark wrote:
| Separate room with interlocking doors
|
| -coming from another hacker space
| dheera wrote:
| > 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.
| cowthulhu wrote:
| Are lasers typically able to reflect off of surfaces that
| diffuse light (ie drywall)? I'm totally ignorant when it
| comes to laser safety, apologies if this is a stupid question
| .
| meindnoch wrote:
| Do you see a bright spot when aiming the laser at drywall?
| If the answer is yes, then laser light is being reflected
| into your eye.
|
| Hope this helps!
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Surfaces may produce diffuse or direct reflections (or more
| commonly, a mixture of both) for any light source. If you
| can see it, it's being reflected.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| And even if you can't see it. You won't see a spot from
| an IR laser while it's burning the hell out of your
| retina. Which is why many (but not all) IR lasers co-
| produce a visible spot so you can see where the dangerous
| beam is.
| hinkley wrote:
| I had a friend, "Kevin" who got picked as a lab assistant for a
| guy making one of the first violet, and IIRC, picosecond
| lasers. It's frickin' laser beams so of course I had to ask way
| too many questions. They probably should have been using
| curtains but if they were he never said, and I'm sure laser
| safety has evolved with the wattage and commercialization,
| whereas this was a static benchtop system.
|
| There were lots of mirrors and prisms and they has to calculate
| refraction off of them and stick carbon blocks everywhere that
| light transmission was less than 100% efficient so that no
| light could escape the system except via the target.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| 10km ... damn. And the biggest problem is, the danger is
| invisible.
| ziofill wrote:
| What are the curtains made of? I'm surprised 2500W on 0.06mm
| don't just go through like there's no curtains
| yobid20 wrote:
| The laser should've been mounted on a shark.
| steve1977 wrote:
| "Sharknado 8 - Now They Have Lasers!"
| inetknght wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INFavIUmhcE
| steve1977 wrote:
| "Are you declaring war on the United States, Bob?"
|
| This almost made me spill my tea...
| delichon wrote:
| 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.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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).
| dmd wrote:
| 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!".
|
| [0] https://dmd.3e.org/a-hole-in-my-eye/
| dghughes wrote:
| 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
| justin66 wrote:
| Some scientists used to look at the beam emitter to adjust
| the aim of old particle accelerators. The story I heard was
| that some of them eventually developed cataracts as a result.
| Come to think of it, with today's medical technology that's a
| lot less awful than punching holes into your retina with a
| laser, but I think the result back then was eventually
| blindness.
| dekhn wrote:
| I met a scientist who looked into a particle accelerator;
| it was intention, part of a self-experiment to establish
| whether high energy particles can cause scintillations in
| the eye. In his case he very carefully calculated how to
| get a safe dosage.
|
| On the other hand there's
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski
| wildzzz wrote:
| 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
| light, the red light you see is just sidebands of the signal.
|
| Fiber used for long hauls is much more powerful but uses a
| wavelength that the human eye is very good at blocking (so
| your eye dissipates more of the energy but what does get
| through could damage your retina). There are systems that
| will decrease the power if the link is lost (cut or
| unplugged) to protect eyes. The light will still dissipate in
| free space (because there's no lens) so you should be safe
| from a distance. Single-mode fiber uses a more focused laser
| and more narrow fiber so it will spread less over a free
| space distance so don't get too close.
|
| Always better to just use a light meter (or a phone camera)
| if you're unsure but also just holding the end of the fiber
| against some paper or your palm may reflect enough of the
| visible light to let you know the fiber is live.
| foobarian wrote:
| Just in case, always use the same eye to look into these
| things.
| jaggederest wrote:
| "Do not look into laser with remaining eye"
| leoqa wrote:
| As an intern moving data centers the old networking guy
| told me to look into them; I used my right eye and now my
| eye is 20/40 a decade later whereas my left eye is still
| 20/20. I did hold it up to my eye because it was hard to
| see..
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| "Low power" lasers are sometimes wildly more powerful than they
| claim to be. I guess what do you expect when you buy a Chinese
| laser pointer on Amazon for 5 bucks.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Nd:YAG lasers such as the one in the article use an IR
| exciter into a crystal to achieve frequency doubling or
| tripling. Much of the energy from the fundamental exciter
| makes it past the crystal, so without good filtering, a
| "safe" class 2 or 3R laser can still produce blinding (but
| invisible) light. Lots of the cheap lasers don't have good
| filtering, so be careful what you buy.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Oh yeah, that's a real problem for cheap green lasers. IR
| diode laser, doubling crystal, and no IR filter is a good
| way to go blind.
| Lramseyer wrote:
| Don't forget that the power rating of a laser pointer
| (unlike literally every other type of light you buy) is the
| output power, not the input power! More importantly, it's
| the output power of only the green laser!
|
| The 1064nm exciter laser is pumped by an 808nm pump laser,
| and based on what I know about how inefficient lasers are,
| I can guarantee that those beams are way more powerful than
| the output beam! If those leak because the manufacturer
| cheaped out on filters, those lasers mat not visible, but
| they are still dangerous!
| madjam002 wrote:
| One of the things I hate most in tourist hotspots these days
| are the people selling high powered laser pointers, normally
| selling them to kids, and they are shining it at their faces,
| in the faces of others, and at the neighbours.
|
| I swear they never used to be so commonplace.
|
| Having worked nightclub lighting a long time ago I have a deep
| appreciation for laser safety haha
| pflenker wrote:
| When I was ~12 years old one boy pinned me down and another
| one shone a laser pointer in my eye just for fun. Needless to
| say, this has been my ,,bad eye" ever since (I'm 39 now)
| scottlamb wrote:
| That's terrible, and I'm guessing they faced little if any
| consequences for it. I'm mad thinking about this, even
| though I wasn't involved and it was 27 years ago.
|
| I would like to think that people would know today that
| laser pointers are weapons so this wouldn't happen, and
| that if it did happen, the schools' zero tolerance policies
| (the ones that you hear about used to stupidly expel
| someone for bringing a butter knife to eat their lunch
| with) would kick in, as school bullies literally damaging
| your body for life is completely unacceptable.
| leptons wrote:
| A friend of mine gave me a high power blue laser pointer, and
| it was fun for a night but I gave it back to him because I
| recognized that it was just too dangerous. One slip, one
| stray reflection, and I'd damage my eyesight or go blind.
| It's just too dangerous, and I'm a very careful person who
| takes precautions - I can't imagine kids with laser pointers
| are going to be able to see very well when they are older.
| protocolture wrote:
| You could have just said "Sales Guy"
| inetknght wrote:
| What a wonderful story about why we can't have nice things.
| Hopefully nobody else outside of the story was hurt.
|
| Lasers are fun. Like all fun things, they demand respect.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Lasers absolutely terrify me now; I impulse bought a 2w lasercube
| in 2020 for next to nothing (circa $200) and once I started
| reading up on it I was pretty appalled how easy it was to buy.
|
| This was a fairly expensive RRP laser with some level of
| protection and stuff around it, the fact you could buy pens
| capable of pretty significant damage on ebay for way less where
| people wouldn't even grasp just how dangerous the thing is.
|
| So I've got a laser I'm afraid to play with until I can make a
| safe environment for it and I'm even more afraid to sell on to
| anyone...
|
| Feel like there's going to be some atrocity and some big time
| laser panic in the future.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Why not just wear the appropriate goggles? You don't have to be
| afraid, you just have to be careful.
|
| Of course, being careful means considering the possible
| presence of subharmonics, and buying your goggles from
| legitimate suppliers rather than unpronounceable Chinese brands
| on Amazon or eBay.
| davecahill wrote:
| Blame Free Retrospective challenge
| 77soccer wrote:
| Very interesting
| DannyBee wrote:
| So while trying to answer another comment on cost, i ran into
| this:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09240...
| and
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00303...
|
| I had thought, reading the article, that maybe this was a
| relatively new idea, and they were at least trying something
| relatively new in an insane way.
|
| But no, the latter is from 1999 (so when this event occurred),
| and there were earlier papers they cite.
|
| Using lasers to do paint stripping of coatings from roadways was
| well studied even then, and all the risks/rewards carefully laid
| out.
|
| Not that i expect the sales engineer to have read that, but
| still.
| csours wrote:
| > "oxygen shroud-gas"
|
| Do they call it MOG instead of MIG? Although it's Chlorinated
| Rubber, not metal, so maybe it's CROG.
| NathanielBaking wrote:
| 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 National Guard.
| talldayo wrote:
| It's all fun and games until you walk in front of a live AESA
| radar and sterilize yourself.
| khorne wrote:
| Save $300 on a vasectomy.
| peepee1982 wrote:
| They're about twice as much where _I_ live!
| shaftway wrote:
| Most US insurance will cover this at 100% even if you
| haven't met your deductible. Something about how babies
| cost more than a 3 digit outpatient procedure....
| ryneandal wrote:
| Mine was $750 :(
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I'm guessing there are other adverse effects beside
| sterilizing.
| SXX wrote:
| Is it scientifically proven though? If it that powerful
| wouldn't it cook your brain as well?
| archgoon wrote:
| > that village is down wind of the dust you will kick up when
| it goes off.
|
| I'm always happy to hear that there are people saying these
| sorts of things in the military. I'm sorry it wasn't fun at the
| time, but the Safety Officer really was looking out for you.
| You really don't want to be the unexpected cautionary tale,
| like Bob.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| 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.
| trelane wrote:
| I think they know that. I read their comment as sarcastic.
| jprete wrote:
| It's really, really close though. The kill distance of six
| miles is what tips me over the edge of reading it as
| sarcasm.
| trelane wrote:
| Really? To me, it is a very clear instance. Amongst my
| cohort, saying "The safety officer won't let us do
| anything fun" is going to generally always be sarcastic,
| unless the point is that some rules seem excessively and
| obviously pointless, which these aren't. It's more a
| backhanded way of saying "thank goodness the safety
| office stopped us / those boneheads from doing something
| that would have been incredibly stupid."
| nocman wrote:
| It depends totally on how you read it. In this case, my
| first thought after reading that was "play stupid games,
| win stupid prizes". There are plenty of people
| (especially on the internet) who actually _do_ think that
| way -- by which I mean people that are serious when they
| respond with "you guys ruin all the fun" to others who
| bring up genuine concerns that will most likely have
| wide-sweeping ramifications.
| trelane wrote:
| > There are plenty of people (especially on the internet)
| who actually do think that way
|
| Sure. That's why these safety officers exist. I think
| some other funranium posts state.that (paraphrased)
| "safety rules are written in blood."
|
| That said, I suspect folks like that would tend to phrase
| the rule in a way to diminish the implied
| impact/likelihood, rather than enhance it or state as-is,
| as (afaict) the original did.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _hull damage being caused or not caused by a rifle being
| fired from the flight deck of a ship_
|
| How did _that_ happen? Our MarDet would occasionally do live-
| fire training off the flight deck (CVN-65); they naturally
| pointed their weapons _away_ from the ship ....
|
| Or are you talking about hitting the hull of a different
| ship, e.g., one of the tin cans in plane guard, or alongside
| during an UNREP? Seems like that would ... get noticed by a
| lot of folks.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| Hypothetically, someone could have left a guest (like say
| an engineer from the shipyard doing sea acceptance testing)
| fire a rifle and an unlucky wave reflection might have
| bounced a round back towards the bow.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Wow what an incredibly unfortunate hypothetical
| situation. 1 in a million ricochet that one.
| edm0nd wrote:
| Seabees doing seabee things.
| ooterness wrote:
| I am reminded of the "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of
| a bitch in space" speech from Mass Effect 2.
|
| https://youtu.be/hLpgxry542M?feature=shared
| elzbardico wrote:
| Compton is a bitch for astronauts too.
| gumby wrote:
| > 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 everything but frequently they'd
| let 'em blow off steam by tossing cardboard boxes and stuff off
| the end the flight deck and shooting at them with the 50 cal
| machine guns.
|
| We were good friends, attended MIT together, but if I thought
| the Navy would take many people like him I'd doubt their
| ability to fight a war. He was only in the navy because it
| would pay for school and AFAIK he managed to avoid getting
| _any_ rank advancement at all. MIT requires, or used to, a lot
| of all nighters and he once said "I'm probably only sane with
| these all nighters because I did so much extra sleeping in the
| navy"
| afterburner wrote:
| > I thought the whole point of the Marines was to cause
| maximal amounts of damage.
|
| I thought their point was to expose _themselves_ to maximal
| amounts of damage.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > I thought their point was to expose themselves to maximal
| amounts of damage.
|
| I hate to be pedantic, but technically the whole point is
| to expose the enemy to maximal amounts of damage. Whoever
| that is. Anything else is incidental.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > 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 everything but frequently
| they'd let 'em blow off steam by tossing cardboard boxes and
| stuff off the end the flight deck and shooting at them with
| the 50 cal machine guns.
|
| If anything this should be why the taxpayer doesn't like the
| navy.
| jnwatson wrote:
| Rule number 1 of laser safety is "do not look into beam with
| remaining eye".
| altruios wrote:
| I think that's rule number two. Right after "don't look at the
| laser".
| dietr1ch wrote:
| then the third rule must be, "now you can do whatever the
| fuck you want" written in Braille.
| Szpadel wrote:
| the other saying I know is: "you can see laser only twice in
| your life, once with your eye and second time with the
| remaining one"
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| One of the lessons you can take from this is that people think in
| the tools they know even when there's better, simpler tools
| available.
|
| 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
| gtmitchell wrote:
| That brings back memories. One of my first research projects in
| school was doing sketchy things with a Quanta-Ray Nd:YAG laser. I
| remember the distinct 'tack-tack-tack' sound of the Q-switching
| at 10 Hz which I used to create a laser-induced plasma right
| around eye level.
|
| Fortunately I had the proper goggles on but was always terrified
| of catching a stray reflection and blinding myself. Now we live
| in a world of dirt-cheap high-powered diode lasers, and when I
| see all the stupid things YouTubers do with them with almost no
| discussion of proper eye safety, I wince.
| N_A_T_E wrote:
| I worked in a laser lab for a few months early in my career.
| After the safety training I fear lasers getting near my eyes in
| situations most people don't care about. I even look away from
| barcode scanners at grocery stores. Sometimes I wonder about
| lidar being shot in all directions from those self-driving cars
| around SF.
| Miraste wrote:
| There's been at least one sketchy self driving startup that
| drove their LiDAR hard enough they burnt holes in journalists'
| camera sensors at CES.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/01/man-says-ces-lidars-las...
| neilv wrote:
| I'd wondered about the eye safety of LIDAR on prototype
| autonomous vehicles, but then thought "surely anything at all
| unsafe to eyes wouldn't be allowed on public streets."
|
| Now I'm reminded of all the unregulated recklessness in some
| technical topics that I do understand, and realizing it's
| silly to assume.
| sersi wrote:
| Should I be concerned about the lidar in my dreame robot vacuum
| (L10s ultra) and my 3 years old whose head is closer to the
| ground than me?
|
| I never thought about it before but you'r comment worries me.
| kqr wrote:
| Wait, are barcode scanners lasers? I've always thought of them
| as red lamps because their cone spreads out so widely quickly.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's a scanning dot moving fast enough to appear as a cone.
| hinkley wrote:
| The stationary ones used to have a spinning mirror with a
| laser pointed at it. You used to be able to look in the
| machine and see it. Dunno how they do it now for the
| handheld scanners. Smaller mirror or some other trick like
| piezo?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Hand scanners for a while have been able to use just LEDs
| to illuminate the barcode it turns out. Way cheaper than
| having so many moving parts like the older laser based
| scanners.
| franciscop wrote:
| I've touched all sorts of things in my "Maker" years, but one of
| the things I'm never going to touch by far is lasers. I know how
| bad they are, and I also know how woeful unqualified I'm for
| messing with lasers. Heck, I've even left a couple of dancefloors
| in clubs that I heavily suspected were firing actual lasers at
| the people, wonder how many of those were actual lasers vs light
| pointers and how many people got unknowingly injured, but it was
| just not worth the risk.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Even better is when the dancefloor wants UV lighting, so they
| just buy some cheap UV-C bulbs
| duskwuff wrote:
| Funranium has a post about that, too:
| https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2023/11/ultraviolet-rant/
| Sakos wrote:
| > We do not want to share space with a UV-C air sterilizer
| because we like to see with our eyeballs
|
| This was a good read.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| https://kotaku.com/bored-apes-nft-blind-eye-pain-uv-light-
| pa...
|
| most famous example of that.
| techstrategist wrote:
| What are the implications of that choice? Safety?
| krisoft wrote:
| > Heck, I've even left a couple of dancefloors in clubs that I
| heavily suspected were firing actual lasers at the people,
| wonder how many of those were actual lasers vs light pointers
| and how many people got unknowingly injured, but it was just
| not worth the risk.
|
| It is not really clear what you are saying here. What do you
| mean by "actual lasers" vs "light pointers".
|
| Whether or not a light show is safe has nothing to do with the
| light source being an "actual laser" or not. What matters is
| what kind of laser and how it is used.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| They are actual lasers and they're fine. Assuming you're
| talking about the light shows and not just random people.
| bryceacc wrote:
| Last year I went to a karaoke dance floor club thing in NYC
| k-town and I saw literal burn marks on the wall. A spinning
| laser disco thing continuously traced across the burn mark. I
| got our group the hell out of there but they only agreed to
| leave because it was too loud
| londons_explore wrote:
| Are there any stats on the scale of laser eye injuries?
|
| Like what percentage of the world population are blind because of
| laser injuries? What percentage have permanent vision issues?
|
| How do those compare with the number of people who work with
| lasers?
|
| How does it compare with say vision loss from arc welding?
| Szpadel wrote:
| it's hard to know if you have eye damage, we have big blind
| spots right in the center of our eyes that we are not aware of.
|
| our brain can fill out missing data from context and the same
| happens with eye damage.
|
| with progressing damage you will see normally until you cross
| some threshold where your brain gives up and you are then blind
| iaresee wrote:
| Having started out my tech career as an intern in an industrial
| laser lab, this story is parts amusing and horrifying. Brought
| back a lot of memories of all the ablation tests and via drilling
| I used to do, with varying degrees of success, to help sell this
| massive lasers.
| Flop7331 wrote:
| 1999, when you could pull a stunt like this and still get two
| weeks notice for it
| tomcam wrote:
| > the company claims the machine can take care of business safely
| "even in the most movement-heavy conditions," and that dry run
| testing on moving humans has all been successful.
|
| So many questions
| hinkley wrote:
| One of my cleverest friends loves to say, "do not look into laser
| with remaining eye."
| manithree wrote:
| Not to be insensitive about your injury, but I'm more curious how
| you got your laser eye.
| strickman wrote:
| Didn't anyone ever tell you to make sure your optics are clean?
|
| -Kent
| phaedrus wrote:
| 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.
| RIMR wrote:
| I have had lasers in my life a long time and have always
| appreciated the risks, but I have taken a couple of very brief
| hits to the eye.
|
| Fortunately, my eye doctor has never seen anything that looks
| like damage, and aside from extreme nearsightedness totally
| unrelated to lasers, my eyes work fine.
|
| These ultra-powerful lasers that will toast your retinas
| instantly scare the shit out of me. The fact that you can buy a
| tattoo removal gun on AliExpress
| (https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806988159318.html) is just
| insane. The kinds of mass-violence you could commit with a device
| like are outrageous, I figure it's only a matter of time before
| someone uses something like this against an unsuspecting crowd.
|
| Even just using the wrong kinds of lasers or UV lights at a
| concert can have awful consequences:
| https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/jul/16/news.seanmicha... /
| https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/11/bored-ape-creator-say...
|
| If this kind of thing can happen by accident, imagine what could
| be done on purpose.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| not really related, but people say you shouldn't look directly at
| the sun.
|
| I don't understand why having the sun in your field of view at
| all isn't dangerous then. wouldn't that cause the sun to burn a
| hole somewhere inside your eyeball that isn't the direct center?
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