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FrozenGate by Avery

Where Wicked Lasers gets their specs!

Trevor

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As a few of you know, I made a site (in the midst of the Arctic fiasco), safelasers.org, that hosts my warning label generator, some other laser-related tools, and safety information. It gets a lot of hits off of Google from people looking for laser safety information.

The calculator pages receive a lot of Google hits too. I have a recommended OD calculator (using information from Sperian's numbers they gave me when I consulted them about goggles), a divergence calculator, and an eye-hazard distance calculator.

The hazard calculator uses Sperian's numbers to arrive at the distance (in meters) necessary for a laser to have traveled (and thus diverged) such that taking a direct hit from that distance with a fully dilated pupil would be the same as taking a direct hit through a pair of Sperian's laser safety goggles at the OD they recommend. I forget the residual power, but I believe it's on the order of 0.3-0.4mW entering the eye. This is by no means a perfect number, but it illustrates the danger of lasers - even far away from them.

I made an interesting discovery the other day - WL used my calculator to calculate their "NOHD" (I quote because I think this is only posted to make WL look good, not to keep their customers safe). They put their specs into my calculator, clicked submit, rounded the number, then published it on their website on the specifications page for each of the lasers below (all of the ones on their site).

The "WL" column is the number posted on their site, and the "SL" column is the number yielded by using my website. Unfortunately they rounded all of them down. :(

Code:
| Laser  | Div | Dia |  Pwr |  WL |  SL    |
| -------|-----|-----|------------|------- |
| E2 405 | 1.0 | 1.0 |  100 |  70 |  71.5  |
| E2 532 | 1.5 | 1.5 |  100 |  47 |  47.33 |
| E2 650 | 1.0 | 2.0 |  100 |  70 |  70.5  |
| -------|-----|-----|------------|------- |
| E3 405 | 1.0 | 1.0 |  200 | 100 | 101.53 |
| E3 532 | 1.5 | 1.5 |  200 |  67 |  67.35 |
| E3 650 | 1.0 | 2.0 |  200 | 100 | 100.53 |
| -------|-----|-----|------------|------- |
| Arctic | 1.5 | 5.0 | 1000 | 149 | 149.5  |

How can I be positive? The number used to calculate a "safe" exposure is unique - changing it at all will result in a much different distance.

So... on the one hand, at least they indirectly used the recommendation of a legitimate safety goggles company - Sperian.

On the other hand, they used a calculator they found online, never inquired the owner (me!) as to how the calculator actually computes the number, and proceeded to post the number as a specification.

:poke:

-Trevor
 
Last edited:





Re: Revealed: Where Wicked Lasers gets their specs!

In other words...Wicked is too lazy to do their own measurements, and they're not worried about how those measurements came to be.
 
Re: Revealed: Where Wicked Lasers gets their specs!

Coincidentally enough, I just finished a Excel sheet that calculates NOHD from beam diameter & divergence, and conversely calculates divergence given diameter, power, etc.

Naively, I used WL's numbers as the starting point, and from that, I deduced that the max power to enter the eye needed to be < .025mW/mm^2 (or <1mW entering the average 38.5mm^2 pupil area).

I did not bother to look up the official definition of NOHD or max-exposure-power, etc. ...
 
Re: Revealed: Where Wicked Lasers gets their specs!

Thanks for sharing, +1

-Chris
 
Thanks for the info Trevor. Strange really, I thought all the specs came from here:
head_up_arse%5B1%5D.2
 
Re: Revealed: Where Wicked Lasers gets their specs!

Coincidentally enough, I just finished a Excel sheet that calculates NOHD from beam diameter & divergence, and conversely calculates divergence given diameter, power, etc.

Naively, I used WL's numbers as the starting point, and from that, I deduced that the max power to enter the eye needed to be < .025mW/mm^2 (or <1mW entering the average 38.5mm^2 pupil area).

I did not bother to look up the official definition of NOHD or max-exposure-power, etc. ...
BTW, Trevor: I meant to say a big THANK YOU for your site; I've generated a few labels from it, and played with your calculators; I also feel obliged to thank you indirectly for WL's plagarized specs :D

I was looking at the FAA form for max allowable power per given airspace ... it indicated that the Max Permissible Exposure per ANSI Z136.1 for visible light is .00254 W/cm^2. If I convert it to mW/mm^2, it is almost exactly my calculated # ... I guess I should have looked it up first, huh? :undecided:
 
I wonder what formulas they use to generate the other specs they claim their lasers have. I doubt all of them are accurate and actually created via real testing. E.g. battery life, output, divergence...

-Chris
 
BTW, Trevor: I meant to say a big THANK YOU for your site; I've generated a few labels from it, and played with your calculators; I also feel obliged to thank you indirectly for WL's plagarized specs :D

No problem! I'm happy to be able to help out. :)

I wonder what formulas they use to generate the other specs they claim their lasers have. I doubt all of them are accurate and actually created via real testing. E.g. battery life, output, divergence...

-Chris

Divergence... probably by averaging the two axes of divergence (for the Arctic). Battery life... probably theoretical battery capacity divided by theoretical current draw (seeing as they got the "NOHD" by inputting their theoretical specifications). As for power, whatever they advertise at. :p

I've heard of people using the labels in their workshops and businesses... I'm wondering if a Chinese company will ever notice the label generator and ship lasers labeled with it. :D

-Trevor
 


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