Hello all,
This is an earnest question. Something happened last night that quite frankly concerned me to the point that I wonder if perhaps this hobby is best left to the professionals. Safety is #1 and even as a new guy I've respected the lasers and obtained two pair of safety glasses while working on my first RGB projector. Fear is sort of a good thing because it breeds respect but this scared the hell of me...
I had a static beam shining out of the scanner while it was in home position and was shocked when I noted my black computer chair smoking. This beam was emitted from "only" a '100 mW TEC cooled 532 nm laser' and it even passes through a dicro and still burns a hole through the chair in seconds. Yes - I've been safe so far - the beam was on because I working on setting up the correction amp blanking for the laser.
WOW. There could be no second chances if that hits your eye; Its one thing to read about it but quite another to see it yourself. I thought that staying in the few 100s of mW power would be relatively safe but now wonder if that is the case....
Is it possible that the chinese laser emits an incredible amount of IR which could make it more hazardous ? I lack the instruments to measure the power.... It is from o-like.
The 150mW red 'appears' more safe - meaning it is easier on the eyes to observe a scanned image on the wall than the green laser.
Now I'm almost afraid of the '1 Watt' 445nm blue that is sitting on the bench .... Been reading that the blue is even more dangerous due to the fact that tissue absorbs that radiation more readily than the reds and greens...
Maybe I'm just 'shocked' by this observation... Into the projector for almost $ 1K USD so far and now the very thing that has attracted me to pursue building a projector (the beauty of laser light) scares the snot outta me .... Interesting that when I was a teenager I bet I wouldn't even give this a second thought...
This is serious business!
Pep talks from the experienced are encouraged! And I might mention thanks to Allthatwhichis for sharing his eye injury with the community. This really makes you think...
Thanks for reading,
Stay safe!
Jason