"My first eye injury" by Milan Karakaš

I found this a good read. Some croatian enthusiast wrote it. Hopefully it will deter future carelessness with pointers.

Oh man, i was just going to try and point my laser into my eye my too... Thanks for the FYI.

Don't be a smartass. We've all looked into a low-powered laser deliberately at some point and some here are complacent with IIIB types. The article tells you not to let curiosity get the better of you.

As far as I know that link have been posted here several times before, but it's worth posting again.

General Pinpoint Townes said:

Don't be a smartass. We've all looked into a low-powered laser deliberately at some point and some here are complacent with IIIB types. The article tells you not to let curiosity get the better of you.

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You mean deliberately shined a laser directly into my eye? I have had laser pointers since I was 10 or so, and I can say that I have never aimed a laser pointer directly into my eye, and I am sure most others on here have enough intelligence to not shine a laser deliberately into there eyes too. Now, reflections on the other hand are a different story, but we still try our best to avoid those.

Me personally, I work in the laser entertainment business and frequently deal with lasers from 2 watt to 30+ watts, yes both green and rgb in those ranges.

Ok, so I will agree don't be stupid and point a laser into your eye.

j33z... even unfocused it can cause damage!!!
LOL and he tried again to see if he was rght with the black spot...

Srsly.... next time i eat, i'll try to insert the fork into my eye to see what happens. In both eyes to confirm.

erdabyz said:

j33z... even unfocused it can cause damage!!!
LOL and he tried again to see if he was rght with the black spot...

Srsly.... next time i eat, i'll try to insert the fork into my eye to see what happens. In both eyes to confirm.

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When I was young I thought of a great way to find out if the cigarette lighter in a car was working. I just stuck my finger in it. I didn't think to actually try and light my smoke, I just thought that it wasn't glowing red hot so it probably wasn't working. I was wrong, but that burn, unlike coherent light to the retina, only lasted a month or so. Thank goodness I no longer smoke cigarettes; I may be still an idiot but I did learn something from that incident...

I have never looked strait at a laser beam.
However, One time I decided to burn something and I didn't where my glasses. I couldn't see the color red for about 15 min!!

Never again

I always wear ANSI-certified laser safety goggles (not that zonestealth junk) with an OD of at least one more then necessary. The exception is when I am working with less then 5mW, or when I am taking pictures, but then only when I am lining up the picture and after that they go right back on.

I've had my fair share of coherent light to the face, including multiple direct specular reflections and two incidents of accidentally putting my eye directly into the path of a 40mW argon beam and subsequently punching a small hole in my retina. Thankfully it is way out in the left peripheral, but never again am I going near a laser without certified goggles.

Also worth mentioning is the electrical dangers of gas lasers. I had a large capacitor bank explode in my face and it welded my screwdriver to the chassis of the power supply. Pure luck it wasn't my hand welded instead.

I love how he obviously ruins his vision and then tries again to confirm what he just experienced. Like, fail.

Sure, I have deliberately taken one of those cheap-o red 1mW pointers to the eye just to see what happens, but never would do it with a greenie, especially anything over 5mW...

Anyone else notice how he called mWs microwatts ? ;D

General Pinpoint Townes said:

Don't be a smartass. We've all looked into a low-powered laser deliberately at some point and some here are complacent with IIIB types. The article tells you not to let curiosity get the better of you.

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oh dear, not deliberately I can tell you...
My advice reflecting from my own experience is: Don't even THINK of bringing your laser into the room of mirrors at the state fair because there will always be one mirror that you failed to notice that happens to be perpendicular to your eye that reflects the beam to exactly the worst place it could travel to... :'(

The funhouse isn't really fun when one eye doesn't work and you lose all ability to precieve depth. Thankfully it was a <5mw red, not a +5mw green :-[

some people have ideas... i just yelled at my father yesterday, when he looked into the barrel of my 100mw dx green when it was off, but had batteries in it. the danger to accidently hit the button is way too high to risk it.

i can not imagine how someone can be dumb enough to look into a laser of any power on purpose. i took a hit from a (diy-hdd-)scanned ~120mw red to the left eye and had a dark swoosh in my vision for some minutes (i think i see can still see it when i close my eyes, but that might be imagination), and i nearly started to puke just for the thought of having damaged my eye...

seriously, experiment with something that repairs itself. burn your fingers, break your bones, scratch your skin, anything. your eyes will go bad soon enough just by aging, there is no need to accelerate this process...

I think that is a stupid article. All it really does is make leverage for the laser haters to ban these things even more. I don’t know to believe what this guy is experimenting, it sounds nothing more then failure failure failure. It almost sounds like he has optic neuritis which wouldn't be related to lasers at all!

And this is a very stupid experiment, and it is a prime example as of why lasers should be banned because if people are too stupid not to hurt them selves, then imagine how people will be to others, such as public places, traffic, aircrafts, etc. And I’m sure it would be to costly for the government to run a registering program like how they do with guns to keep our constitutional rights… haha.

Not like you’re going to test your new gun on your hand to make sure it really is a 45c or whatever… or to test a new saw on your finger to see if it can cut through flesh or bone, or your new soldering iron to check if it gets hot with your tongue… OR challenge my luck by trying some stunt that scared the shit out of me again, and again, until it actually does something! Btw, when I was 10 with my first laser pointer, I did look into the beam of my 5mW red, just because I was young, stupid, and curious, nothing happened but I would NEVER do that now, especially with “DPSS”, or 532nm…that’s just plain stupid.

And a little off topic, but I have a quick stupid story:
So about a 1 ½ years ago after my first blu-ray build with the ps3 LD at ~10mW, I brought it to work. One of our senior workers, who actually manages a department in our office, took it and stared into it right away. I couldn’t believe he would do such a thing. He said; “It doesn’t look that bright so it’s ok”. I was like, ok laser expert, suit yourself! And he’s 56 years old. Stupidity comes in all forms with all ages. And it almost never surprises me. What amazes me is that as it seems, the more technology evolves, the more dependence us humans have on the technology and the less understanding we have of the technology’s workings, and/or actual purpose. It’s sad, and the internet seems to show it off very well.

This "milan karakas" is not the sharpest tool in the shed... there is some thing
called Common Sense.... And this guy obviously has none..

Just change "laser" to "White Hot molten metal" and "shine" to "touch"
and "eye" to "finger"... and I don't think his "experiment" would have been
done... and at least not twice... IMO :

Jerry

high powered lasers are great for DIY laser eye surgery, and it's cheaper

Mohrenberg said:

high powered lasers are great for DIY laser eye surgery, and it's cheaper  

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ROFL..... ;D ;D ;D

Jerry