Opinion on safety

[gottaluvlasers]

I just caught wind of this club in CT. that hires out this DJ team and they bring in their own lasers.

Now, in all honesty, i could care less about them doing lasers. This club has called me before for a *REAL* laser show and they have a budget of ZILCH. however, my concern is the apparent lack of safety of this display.

granted, its all the blinkey winkey crap, but it all seems pretty powerful to me. I was actually turned on to the video by another DJ who knows me and sent me the video becasue he was DJ'ing there also and was getting annoyed as hell of the lasers.

What are your opinions??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8KCs4nN0-k

-Marc

[ireedz]

Marc,

My opinion is that if a laserist isn't going to do it right (variances, safety measures, etc) and instead they are going to do it cheap, then they should be put out of business. The general public that goes into that club should not be put at risk. It hurts everyone from the hobbyist to the pros when poor judgments are made. I'm not judging based on the video footage because only proper metering and inspection of equipment would determine the actual safety level. I'm only trying to give you an idea of where I'm coming from.

Ian

[rgb-gas]

hard to tell the power! but more than class 2, i think. do they keep it out of the crowd?

[polishedball]

At least they made it easy for the right people to find them, location and business name.

[White-Light]

Look very weak to me but its impossible to tell from a video.

If I had to guess Marc, I'd say safe by a long way.

That said, if they don't have a variance, they're still breaking the law in your country.

By way of contrast, this is a video from a club over here that plays by the rules (at least so far as I'm aware):

Difference is immediately apparent as soon as the camera swings off the DJ into the room from 24 secs onwards, especially again when you see the power in the slow ribbed fans at 3 mins 30 approx..

Best viewed in HD and full screen sitting back from the monitor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjIlKe_RMC8

[MechEng3]

Well it defiantly falls into "asshatery" action. No fat beams apparent to reside within the non-eye hazard limitations for crowd scanning. Crowd scanning? Let me see you documents please... Even at what looks like class 2 laser products it is wrong what is being done.
I have went through quite some time , patient reading and in depth study before applying for a variance. I have had a bit of help with the basic structure and appreciate it , but there is a lot of work involved. Is it worth it? Without a doubt. Safety is no accident. Most every thing related to the whole ball of wax is safety oriented......why how when who where and for what duration of time. My vote is for Marc to do the show...tell the club to cash up on you for the real deal. Once an injury claim is filed on whom-ever that is doing those shows.....

Lets all work to keep it safe so we can continue to enjoy this hobby

[Robin]

Spaz and Flail. Eye safety concerns aside, there's certainly the risk of seizure.

[DMills]

Always hard to tell from video, but I would note that those diffraction effects in the first video had a lot of red in them and that in unlikely to spell big power in that context.

Still, crowd scanning in the US? Usually naughty.

Ref the Gatecrasher vid, cool but I don't know about those rotating lines into the crowd (bright ups at the ends, definitely a cue to measure), also there seemed to be audience around the camera which seemed to be nearly co planar with the laser heads, but overall it is not at all atypical of that sort of gig over here.

It actually looked very, very standard lasers at a bigger "Rave" over here.

Hell, ten years or so ago we would do that (and worse (think mirror ball at ~60RPM)) with a pair of I90 regassed Ar/Kr doing 4 watts or so and consider it to be common practise (Doubt you would get away with it these days).

Even with that lot the ocular hazard was probably less the the danger to hearing!

Regards, Dan.

[allthatwhichis]

I don't know Marc; that looks safer to me than the gatecrasher video, mainly because it is the winky blinky stuff. I am not saying they are "doing it right", just that those lasers don't look too powerful to me compared to the ones in the video White-Light posted.

[DMills]

Well there is Safe and then there is Complies with local regulations, and it tends to be the second bit that most small operators in the States fall down on most obviously.
I am thinking all the grotty little mobile disco operators that buy a few tens of mW of diffraction effects from banjo centre to go on the truss behind the DJ, for the most part not really a hazard, but they will never do the Variance paperwork, never mind show reports.

That winky, blinky shit is mostly going to be safe in practise (Modulo cheap greens that are mostly 1064 at the output), in a way that the several watts Gatecrasher will have been running would not be in the same setup, but gatecrasher will at least have put the paperwork in (Ours is a LOT less painful then the US version) and the environmental health people may have paid a visit, so someone will have looked and asked the questions.

The problem with the US system is that because the CDRH are basically set up to think "Medical Device (Possibly involving X or Gamma photons)" there is really no middle ground for the sort of 100mW toy club stuff so common over here. It is all either <5mW (pretty naff) or full on variance in which case you may as well build a grown up rig to get the cost of the build above the cost of the paperwork.

The effect is that I suspect the entire mobile disco and small club crowd run under the radar with no monitoring and probably little competence (Or even recognition that lasers are not just another "intelligent" light.

Regards, Dan.