A plea for safety, pl edition.

[Stuka]

Hmm, not so great if you were both wrong, eh?

Is EF electro freak? If so, he is on LPF too.

http://www.tsteele93.com
http://www.facebook.com/tsteele93

Nah, pretty sure we both knew you weren't EF, although some of the "logic" and rebuttals do seem VERY familiar.

So, all the Pangolin detours aside -

What in the world made you feel the need to jump in and stir up this thread, anyway?
Is the knowledge base that one acquires by taking some undergraduate optics classes and hanging out on a laser pointer forum REALLY enough to make a person want to challenge the safety concerns presented by true laser professionals?

Or is that perhaps just the radio talk show personality that needs to stir up confrontation?

Just trying to understand the mind set...

EDIT

Nah, never mind; this has turned into one of those threads that really isn't worth the time and effort.
Any expectation of a reasonable exchange ended a couple of pages ago.
Too much time & energy already wasted...later!

[masterpj]

At Request, copied from my posts at LPF.

I don't give a damn about lack of enforcement of federal laws in the US or Free Will or Personal Freedom. Let me rephrase that, I do give a damn about my ability to purchase tools, parts, and materials to do my job as a laser professional and my freedom.
Steve

I can't agree with you more.
I wish they'd require to show a license to purchase any diodes.

Like not a license that costs a lot of $$$$$ but does require the proper knowledge to actually get it.
I think having to need a a lot of dosh (money) to buy laser equipment is not the way to proper prevention.
It will just let the rich kids who as well abuse it get it and use it as their luxury showoff and abuse tool.

If only they'd sell the diodes as single units (casio diodes from the factory) (if done smart they can have a big stock and just keep selling them)
And make it so you cannot salvage the diodes anymore (if you do they break somewhere)

That would be an nearly ideal situation.
Sadly too difficult to execute globally :/

To round my post off, I still haven't seen a proper use for 1watt blue laser handhelds..
I'm really curious... Are there any except popping balloons and lighting matches......
Personally I think when it comes to actuall handhelds they should forbid them at a certain power or require an license.

[White-Light]

No, I didn't at all suggest that was a bad thing. I'm just saying that if your are putting on shows correctly then you aren't learning a lot about laser eye injuries because you aren't inflicting them.

So we should all be inflicting eye injuries on our audiences so we can learn from the experience?

Also, what you forgot or maybe didn't know is that the ILDA eye safety data is built upon 20 years + of show experience in Europe where many clubs have run powers exceeding MPE (this is what has led to the 10xMPE proposal from ILDA as it was felt that the safety margin could be eroded a bit) and also from laboratory experiments with eye balls in which eyes were actually exposed to laser radiation and then checked under the microscope for any cellular changes ie more than just visible burns.

In addition the whole MPE level is based upon a serious of facts based on those laboratory tests on real eyes and is based upon a percentage of eyes showing changes ie. Just because you exceed MPE doesn't mean everyone's eyes will be damaged. The amount of risk increases with the power over MPE and so does the percentage of eyes showing changes. From memory at MPE the risk is only 1% so out of 1,000 watching a show potentially only 10 would show changes.

Do you guys go to the eye doctor? Maybe because I wear contact lenses I have a different view of this, but every year I have to go in for a very thorough exam to renew my prescription. I even specifically ask about any anomalies and whether my hobby could be a cause. I'm very confident that if I had caused injury that it would have been spotted.

2 Points:

1. The vast majority of the population don't have regular eye checks, us contact lens / glasses wearers as clubbers are in the minority - again look at the percentage risk of injury 1%, then apply that to the number of people wearing contact lenses in the room as a percentage of the audience and you have a minutely small chance of a lens wearer being the person who's eyes got damaged.

2. Have you actually looked directly into a pointer? (I'm not recommending it!) I seriously urge you to look at the chipboard I posted a picture of above - that was from 10 metres and the smaller burns developed in less than 1 second of non modulated output. That isn't bullshit and the very fact that hand held lasers burn tape and pop balloons if you like it more simplistic should tell you they have the power to burn your eye, not least because your eye has another lens on the front so not only do you have the burning power of the laser but then a magnifying glass on the front of the eye focusing the point smaller (remember at school burning things with a magnifying glass and the sun? - That's the eye scenario).

I would suggest if you've had no damage you've not shone a pointer directly onto the back of your eye.

If you search the LPF forums there was a guy who did exactly that about a year ago by accident with a 200mw pointer. The exposure was only momentary as it accidentally occurred when the pointer fell off the table and shown briefly into his eye on the way down. However, he suffered permanent eye damage and the retinal photos of his injury were posted on the LP forum also.

Really? Because you go on to suggest this...

You might want to re-read "in detail" over some of my previous posts to see why I don't think you ARE reading them...

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...417#post242417



What kind of powers are we talking about here? Sure you aren't mixing apples and oranges? I would be very surprised if those were 700mW-1W lasers, but please let me know if they were. I just think it would be very difficult to damage a pilots eyes at those distances with a 1W laser...

What is NOHD on that? With 1W and 1.0mr I get 730ft and with 1W and 2mr I get 367ft.

Again I urge you to read the report on the Tommorrowland incident in Belgium. Pointers of an estimated 200mw of power from some distance away (10's of metres) caused PERMANENT eye damage to several members of the crowd.

Well, white light seemed very interested in helping me, but I never felt like you were interested in doing much but trying to convince me I was wrong.

What more did you want me to do? I converted several graphics for you for heavens sake!

You complain about the trace module and say its rubbish and yet I can successfully trace in seconds what you said you couldn't trace at all.

I've yet to find anything I could trace in eg TraceIT that I couldn't trace in QS.

I think it is great that you are happy with QS. I just needed something more polished.

I actually use Beyond but have QS on the PC as well for reference and as Beyond's tracing facility is currently still to be developed properly, I use QS for tracing as I find the QS tracing facility currently better!

The trace module is not good, and it is terribly difficult to edit and clean up a quick trace import because of a clunky and outdated interface. It could be great, but it won't be because the worshippers won't hear of their chosen software needing any improvements and dismiss anyone who suggest that there might be problems and brush them off as being the problem.

Nothing of the sort - it's hobbyist software. There's no way Pangolin are going to make it so powerful that people don't need to buy Beyond for advanced use otherwise they'd render Beyond unsaleable.

Pangolin make very little profit from QS, its their professional sales that support the business in the main.

The reason the discussion was difficult and you couldn't answer my questions was because QS couldn't do what I was asking and the la studios trace program (that Pangolin providesvfrom their website) had a critical flaw in that you coud not re-open a file that you had been working on in order to continue editing it at a later time.

I can't comment on LA Studio as I don;t use it. All my tracing has done been in QS without any real problems. No tracing software will give you a perfect output all of the time, you have to be prepared to put the effort in to edit the output and correct improperly placed points.

And of course, even if I COULD deal with the QS quick trace module, I can't save it to anything but pangolin's proprietary format, so I can only share with fun guys like you!

As the world's most popular laser software I think there are far more than just us guys. I believe QS sold 10's of thousands of copies in its 1st year.

I suspect I'll have to get LSX and ether dream DAC and see if it will do what I want... Or as White Light suggested, I could step up and pony up the $$$ for Beyond. After my initial impression with QS I don't see tht happening though. I can't even get support on Pangolin's message board.

As for LSX its your choice. You say you want to distribute files to loads of people and yet you can count LSX users in a few tens of users (only Andrew knows) compared to probably approaching 100,000 QS users.

It's true LSX does some things very well - its main forte seems to be abstract generation where mathematical formulae give almost limitless possibilities to patterns. However, you want to do graphics and I've yet to see any evidence of LSX excelling in that area into something really special. Beyond has a whole professional level 3D system behind it plus a graphics programme that works with layers and it also generates good abstracts if probably not as limitlessly as LSX.

There are also numerous other developments in Beyond that will take it stratospherically beyond what most people have currently seen in several areas. One of those things is its scripting but there are numerous other developments that can't yet be talked about.

However, the choice is yours. I'm sure Andrew will be pleased to add another user and LSX is a nice program, but it is what it is just as Pangolin software is what it is. Understand every software makes compromises somewhere be that ultimate power for ease of use or ease of use for ultimate power. What you need to decide when choosing software is what areas are most important to you and find the programme that best delivers in those areas in a way you find easy to use.

Everyone kept telling me that I might get faster answers if I asked on the Pangolin message boards, so I asked there and got no reply. When I looked into it further, I saw that no one from pangolin had responded to anyone in over three weeks.

[/QUOTE]

You need to contact Pangolin via their contact form not their message boards - most emails are answered in less than 24 hours, often by the CEO himself. You won't find that at any other company.

Contact form here: http://www.pangolin.com/contact/

[tsteele93]

So, all the Pangolin detours aside -

What in the world made you feel the need to jump in and stir up this thread, anyway?
Is the knowledge base that one acquires by taking some undergraduate optics classes and hanging out on a laser pointer forum REALLY enough to make a person want to challenge the safety concerns presented by true laser professionals?

Or is that perhaps just the radio talk show personality that needs to stir up confrontation?

Just trying to understand the mind set...

Well, I first saw this thread on LPF and I was fairly surprised to see it there...

http://laserpointerforums.com/f65/pl...ety-51464.html

Perhaps it makes more sense here, but on LPF it seemed pretty crazy. Group buys of Casio projectors is pretty much a daily part of life there and someone calling for Casio to quit putting high power blues in projectors didn't seem to fit into the forum very well.

Honestly, that is the part of Steve's post that really surprised me. Most of his post is well-intentioned concern. But then you throw in the pinch of hysteria and a call to action for everyone to ring up Casio and tell them to stop doing something that is a huge benefit to the laser hobbyist and I just didn't get it.

And when I saw the date of his post and I chuckled. I just found it amusing that he seemed to have been so obviously mistaken. So I did a little research and found that the facts backed me up, that there has been no huge increase of laser eye injuries and that they have not become "all too common" as he had so dramatically predicted.

You asked about my mindset. I'm a skeptic. Most of the time people who come yelling that the sky is falling are wrong. Back in the 70's it was widely "known" that we wouldn't have enough food to support the planet when we reached 5 billion people. They didn't see the complexity of the issue and they didn't predict that technology would step in and solve the problems. The only starvation we have right now is caused by warlords and fighting, the food is available to feed the entire planet if we could distribute it to everyone.

You mentioned the cold war, I suspect by now you know that I was alive and well during the cold war and I remember that kids were trained to hide under their desks for the imminent, upcoming nuclear war, that never happened. Could it have happened? Sure. But human nature prevailed and it didn't.

I think it is similar with Steve's certainty that laser eye injury would become all too common. He assumed the worst possible case and as usual, that didn't happen. People were at least a little more responsible than he thought they might be. 1W lasers turned out to be a little less dangerous than he thought they would be, and as I mentioned before, the human eye turned out to be more able to survive exposure than he thought it would be...

Regardless of the reasons, he came here over two years ago with an urgent and dramatic declaration that we were going to see laser eye injuries become all too common and he missed.

You also paint me as "having a few undergraduate optics courses" and Steve as a laser professional. And that is fine, but as I said earlier, I don't think Steve's resume qualifies him to be any more expert in regards to actual laser eye injuries. I could be wrong about that, maybe Steve's career has been shining lasers in people's eyes and then looking at the injuries - but I doubt it.

Has he seen some reports of laser professionals working with extremely high power teeth bleaching or surgery performing lasers? Yes, apparently so... I suspect with the magic that is "Google" so could you and I. But regardless, that isn't what this discussion was about. It was about whether the influx of 700mW-1W laser diodes into laser pointer hobbyists hands would result in laser eye injuries becoming "all too common."

That didn't happen. Might we find out about some injuries later because they don't show up right away? Sure. But if you are HONEST about the OP, his point was, "if we don't do something about this, people are going to play with these 1W lasers, injure a LOT of people including themselves and the government is going to crack down on our industry and we won't be able to do this anymore."

And my point is, "that didn't happen."

[norty303]

1W lasers turned out to be a little less dangerous than he thought they would be, and as I mentioned before, the human eye turned out to be more able to survive exposure than he thought it would be..

I think thats a gross mis-statement personally.

Lasers are as dangerous to eyes as they ever have been. Eyes have not been through some sort of evolutionary process since lasers were invented, and certainly not since the 1W 445 diode appeared.
I think the reality is that not as many direct hits take place as people think they might, so people 'get away' with it more often than not (if unnoticeable damage at the time is 'getting away' with anything). That, and the fact that the number of exposures of any kind might simply be lower than anticipated.

[tsteele93]

So we should all be inflicting eye injuries on our audiences so we can learn from the experience?

Hmm, we seem to be having trouble on this point. Once again, no. I am saying that just because someone has years of experience in this field doesn't mean they are imminently more qualified to discuss laser eye injury than someone who has not been doing shows. As I said, if you are doing the shows right you aren't encountering eye injuries anyway.

Also, what you forgot or maybe didn't know is that the ILDA eye safety data is built upon 20 years + of show experience in Europe where many clubs have run powers exceeding MPE (this is what has led to the 10xMPE proposal from ILDA as it was felt that the safety margin could be eroded a bit) and also from laboratory experiments with eye balls in which eyes were actually exposed to laser radiation and then checked under the microscope for any cellular changes ie more than just visible burns.

I didn't realize that ILDA had actually conducted the tests, but I am aware that such tests have been done. I'm not sure how the living eye differs in protecting itself, but for whatever reasons, Steve's "the sky is falling" declaration just didn't turn out like he predicted.

1. The vast majority of the population don't have regular eye checks, us contact lens / glasses wearers as clubbers are in the minority - again look at the percentage risk of injury 1%, then apply that to the number of people wearing contact lenses in the room as a percentage of the audience and you have a minutely small chance of a lens wearer being the person who's eyes got damaged.

I'll buy that. I was wearing lenses by 19 but I can accept that there are plenty of folks who aren't getting regular eye care. Still, I feel like that the kind of injuries Steve was talking about would have started to show up on the radar screen even with limited numbers of eye exams. Keep in mind that much of this discussion seemed aimed at pointers more than projectors, although I suppose that is up for debate.

2. Have you actually looked directly into a pointer? (I'm not recommending it!) I seriously urge you to look at the chipboard I posted a picture of above - that was from 10 metres and the smaller burns developed in less than 1 second of non modulated output. That isn't bullshit and the very fact that hand held lasers burn tape and pop balloons if you like it more simplistic should tell you they have the power to burn your eye, not least because your eye has another lens on the front so not only do you have the burning power of the laser but then a magnifying glass on the front of the eye focusing the point smaller (remember at school burning things with a magnifying glass and the sun? - That's the eye scenario).

Well, first of all I own several green pointers from 50mW->500mW. I also have personally built and own a 405nm 12x build @ 545mW, 445nm Stainless Steel Monster with H140 diode @1.62A - 2.15W, 638nm Fat Boy @ 825mW - custom build, and a 650nm Bolly BL-8006 @ 319mW.

So I am quite familiar with the burning abilities. And I am not disputing the capability of these lasers to wreak havoc on a human eye.

My point is that, for whatever reasons IT simply hasn't turned out that way.

If you search the LPF forums there was a guy who did exactly that about a year ago by accident with a 200mw pointer. The exposure was only momentary as it accidentally occurred when the pointer fell off the table and shown briefly into his eye on the way down. However, he suffered permanent eye damage and the retinal photos of his injury were posted on the LP forum also.

Yes, I have chatted with him. Accidents certainly happen, they just haven't occurred at the rate Steve predicted. And interestingly, he DID go straightt to the hospital and did everything right. While I'm sure he misses his perfect vision, the damage hasn't drastically affected his life and as has been mentioned, his brain corrects for most of it.

Again I urge you to read the report on the Tommorrowland incident in Belgium. Pointers of an estimated 200mw of power from some distance away (10's of metres) caused PERMANENT eye damage to several members of the crowd.

I did read that and there are a lot of unanswered questions there. But I not dispute that injuries can, and do occur. They just haven't become common.

You complain about the trace module and say its rubbish and yet I can successfully trace in seconds what you said you couldn't trace at all.

I don't recall anything that I couldn't trace. I was trying to be polite, but your trace wasn't what I was shooting for, I was looking for more detail. I know there is a limit to the scanners, but I have been able to get much closer to the original picture than your quick attempts.

I've yet to find anything I could trace in eg TraceIT that I couldn't trace in QS.

I haven't said that either. I said that traceIT is a much better designed module for tracing. The controls are very much like what I suggested that the QS module SHOULD have been like. If it didn't have the fatal flaw of not being able to edit something after you save it, the trace-it would have been a godsend.

Tom

[mixedgas]

Ah, but Steve did sorta go around shining lasers into peoples eyes.... My best friend is a factory trained sales/service engineer for many eye surgery lasers. Who do you think he hires when he has a emergency and can't get to the east coast? I have done deliveries for him. I've field installed more then a few eye surgery lasers. This requires a piece of test paper that you shoot, and a fake eyeball in some cases. I then get the local BioMed Eng or the Doc to witness the testing and sign off on the units.

Surgical aiming beams go to 5-7 mW on full up. Treatment powers start at 250 mW or so for Argon on the retina, less for coagulation of bleeders. Granted the surgical systems have a smaller spot size.

I work on industrial measurement,industrial cutting, scientific lasing and other instruments. This takes me into a diverse environment. Most of those users would NOT pay for a LSO, so I often have to advise on simple precautions.

I've also done, and will be doing more, of lasers in airspace.

I was acting LSO for multiple university labs for 9 years.

I stand by my assertion that at least 5 posts on LPF were eye injuries with blue pointers... I know, I got the PMs of "Oh, what to I do now?" for several more.

You get them to the ER, where they get anti-swelling drugs, drugs that encourage healing, and drugs that reduce clotting. And a painkiller so they stop rubbing the injured eye.

There were and are injuries with the blues and high power greens. Mostly with un-informed folks.

Steve

[tsteele93]

Ah, but Steve did sorta go around shining lasers into peoples eyes.... My best friend is a factory trained sales/service engineer for many eye surgery lasers. Who do you think he hires when he has a emergency and can't get to the east coast? I have done deliveries for him. I've field installed more then a few eye surgery lasers. This requires a piece of test paper that you shoot, and a fake eyeball in some cases. I then get the local BioMed Eng or the Doc to witness the testing and sign off on the units.

But of course those are quite different lasers than what we are talking about here.

Surgical aiming beams go to 5-7 mW on full up. Treatment powers start at 250 mW or so for Argon on the retina, less for coagulation of bleeders. Granted the surgical systems have a smaller spot size.

Exactly, not the 445 laser pointers we have with horrible divergence on one axis.

I stand by my assertion that at least 5 posts on LPF were eye injuries with blue pointers... I know, I got the PMs of "Oh, what to I do now?" for several more.

I don't disagree with you at all here, I would say that perhaps our idea of "all too common" is different. To me that is "surprisingly rare" opposed to "all too common."

I'm sure that you are quite amused to find all this drama going on in your thread, my assertion has always been simple, I don't feel like the future you predicted came true and I think that your post was melodramatic. I'm open to the idea that others feel differently. I've made my statements and my case and I'll bow out now and let everyone resume whatever it is that you all normally talk about. Thanks for the polite discussion.

[dsli_jon]

1W lasers turned out to be a little less dangerous than he thought they would be, and as I mentioned before, the human eye turned out to be more able to survive exposure than he thought it would be...

Tom, you are wholly-entitled to being dead-wrong. Do the homework, the PDF I posted, David Sliney's book, et al, then come back and spin the yarn, based on the vetted-facts, not opinions.

My point is that, for whatever reasons IT simply hasn't turned out that way.

That you *know-of*. You cannot prove there are-not a 'lot more injuries', nor can I prove there are. But, I can prove that the 'higher the power-is, the exponentially-greater the RISK / 'chance' of injury, even with 'glancing-shots', and I believe that to be the substance / motive of Steve's 'concern' - wholly-reasonable.

And I still-assert - and, yep, I know - I'm venturing into 'opinionland' again.. it was a *mistake* for Casio to allow such-easy access, to such a dangerous-level of 445 - in a consumer-product. Even if they *had* made them 'smarter' / less-accessible, that would not have stopped any 'hobbiest', I know-of, from 'harvesting', anyway...Thus, I for one, support his motives in wanting to call them / reason with them on such a risky product-release. If you wanna mock him for that, and the rest of those in PL that endeavor to at least *try* and dispense accurate-information / sound-education, as-to WHY to 'work smart' / 'sell with some responsibility', well you have a good day,

Sir..

j