Commercial NON Varienced laser shows

[ElektroFreak]

in the end I guess we will all be marked as dangerious, shows will be limited to a few mW thanks to a few idiots who have money to buy lasers but no brains to go with them. Anyway, If they had serious brains they would invest the money in something more beneficial as the prices for shows have become compairable to renting lighting fixtures.

This might be the "inevitable" end result, but personally I think if it were that bad we would have had many well-publicized cases of injury in recent years, but I can only remember one. It's going to take a LOT more than one incident (or two for that matter) before laserists are branded as being dangerous cowboys with crazy energy-beam contraptions capable of liquefying flesh on contact and we are reduced to HeNes in our projectors..

Look at the problems facing the laser pointer community.. and the government here hasn't created any laws that state that a person can only own low-powered pointers. In most (but not all) other countries the dangers surrounding lasers aren't even a blip on the legislative radar..

[LASERGUY]

[QUOTE=instinct;121988]

Doesn't Chauvet make a 10mw beam that is supposed to be legal because it is fatter?

Yes they do because I beleive the beam is expanded to at least 10mm in diameter... Much larger than the 7mm pupil so when you run the IEC calculations the number should work out to a similar 5mW (Legal) device.

LG

[Phredy1]

This might be the "inevitable" end result, but personally I think if it were that bad we would have had many well-publicized cases of injury in recent years, but I can only remember one. It's going to take a LOT more than one incident (or two for that matter) before laserists are branded as being dangerous cowboys with crazy energy-beam contraptions capable of liquefying flesh on contact and we are reduced to HeNes in our projectors..

Look at the problems facing the laser pointer community.. and the government here hasn't created any laws that state that a person can only own low-powered pointers. In most (but not all) other countries the dangers surrounding lasers aren't even a blip on the legislative radar..

I disagree some. Our government is "Action ---> Reaction". If something bad was to happen (and especially the media went crazy with it, as they do when there is nothing else to report) you would probably see government reaction.

One person with serious eye damage and a BIG $'s lawsuit and things might change - quickly.

-Gene

[ElektroFreak]

^Perhaps, but the current laws have been in place for years without being significantly altered. There have been MANY illegal laser shows in that time.

Another concern to me is what are our options as a society in terms of reducing this risk? From my perspective there is no way to prevent such an "inevitable" outcome. Basically it's only a matter of time. It's like trying to prevent the next Ft. Hood type incident or the next terrorist attack. Just the act of trying to prevent things like that is EXTREMELY costly in terms of both manpower and money, and is not always successful, maybe even rarely ever successful. For our government to commit those kinds of resources (albeit in smaller numbers) would require this to become a truly large, widespread problem.

So many illegal laser shows take place for one night only at undisclosed locations which are VERY hard to find and impossible to track down the people involved without a task force dedicated to such things. Not going to happen at this point (or the foreseeable future), and it seems a waste of time to contemplate too deeply, really..

[flecom]

So many illegal laser shows take place for one night only at undisclosed locations which are VERY hard to find and impossible to track down the people involved without a task force dedicated to such things. Not going to happen at this point (or the foreseeable future), and it seems a waste of time to contemplate too deeply, really..

ding ding ding

which again, is why i still stand by my thoughts that getting variances while noble, are a completely waste of time

[mixedgas]

ding ding ding

which again, is why i still stand by my thoughts that getting variances while noble, are a completely waste of time

Jeeze, I hope you never do a radio or TV advertised show in Arizona, Pittsburgh or St Louis, all three places where I needed to show some paperwork to make fire marshalls happy.

Steve

[flecom]

Jeeze, I hope you never do a radio or TV advertised show in Arizona, Pittsburgh or St Louis, all three places where I needed to show some paperwork to make fire marshalls happy.

Steve

i guarantee you our fire department has no idea what a variance is

[mixedgas]

i guarantee you our fire department has no idea what a variance is

Your lucky. I've twice had to yell at Fire Marshals for entering my laser safety area without permission.

Steve

[flecom]

Your lucky. I've twice had to yell at Fire Marshals for entering my laser safety area without permission.

Steve

as long as you pay one to "show up" you should be fine here... probably might see him for about 30 seconds when he looks around and says "yep, place isn't on fire" and then goes home lol

this is Miami, its a different world

and I am sure you get variances and have laser safety areas and blah blah, but who asks to see your variance? if you did let them stand within your safety area, who would yell at YOU?

again, variances are a formality that nobody even knows about in the world of enforcement, so their existence is basically useless

[platinum]

. . .again, variances are a formality that nobody even knows about in the world of enforcement, so their existence is basically useless

Plenty of law enforcement officials know about variances and I think it would be foolish to assume that one couldn't get in a load of trouble for not having one here in the near future.

I completely agree that variances are rarely enforced and that a lot of law enforcement officials don't even know about them, but we live in an age of massive amounts of information flying everywhere and I bet it's a matter of time before the aforementioned paradigm shifts and, thanks to some bad apple laser show operators, the laws that will be enforced will be much worse than filing FREE variance, FAA and product report paperwork.



-Jonathan