red goggles you get with level tool kits

Hi
My first post is a safety one
Will the big red goggles you get with Red Laser level tool kits provide
protection for a 100mw green laser?

Welcome to LPF. Enjoy your time with us here.

Those goggles are not engineered for green protection.

I have included a handy guide to assist you in finding what you need.

Those goggles are made to protect against ~5 mW of RED -- NOT GREEN.
Get info from the above search info and keep your eyes.

HMike

Since they were red plastic lenses, i thought they might work.
OK, i am searching

Hemlock_Mike said:

Those goggles are made to protect against ~5 mW of RED -- NOT GREEN.
Get info from the above search info and keep your eyes.

HMike

Click to expand...

you can also always study this chart for future reference.

Thanks for the braille lesson

6piecepearl said:

Since they were red plastic lenses, i thought they might work.
OK, i am searching

Click to expand...

Those glasses are to enhance the red laser dot or line... not for protection.
For Green 532nm Lasers you will need to purchase a pair similar to these or
better....

Anti-Green Laser Glasses - Focalprice.com

or

Laser Glasses - UV to Green Lasers Protection 190-548nm :: Laser Safety :: Dragon Lasers


Jerry

I am ordering the above pair tonight. i want to see...
thanks

Im also in the market for some glasses. Are these really any good for that price?

flyeruk said:

Im also in the market for some glasses. Are these really any good for that price?

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Yes, they work very well.

It's very simple: enhancing a red dot byy blocking the rest means blocking green too. These goggles are not made to block lasers, so you don't really know how much green it blocks untill you test. Good thing green is visible, so you can make a guess or it would be totally useless.

I think a lot of these goggles are sold as green laser safety goggles, I've seen enough big red goggles advertised as expensive safety goggles but completely without any rating or standard. If their OD is high enough, I'd trust it up to 200mW, maybe. Preferably not at all.

Indeed, you can always test it by shining a green laser through them and see how much of the light comes out. If you have a power meter, you can calculate the OD value if you want to.

There is one issue with this: you cannot trust such glasses to keep working, as the dye may 'bleach out' with prolonged exposure. That said, if it reduces the amount of green by, say, a factor of 100 and keeps doing that for a couple of minutes, i see no reason the glasses would not be suitable protection against accidental exposure to (up to) a few 100 mW of green.

One major danger is that they are likely to give no protection against IR, which can and often does leak from green DPSS lasers. Since this is invisble, you should use goggles that protect against both IR and green, or assert the laser is properly IR filtered.

I don't blame glasses for not covering IR, because, in my opinion, only crappy cheap green lasers are unfiltered. Fixing that with goggles is a bit weird. IR covering glasses are handy for things as repairs.
But be sure this glasses can take a direct hit, from what I've seen they melt pretty soon.

I dont fully agree on that - many dpss greens on the commercial market do in fact leak large amounts of IR. I know they should not, but reality is that they do, and there is little way of knowing if you do not own equipment to measure it.

Also, there is a fair risk of malfunction leading to IR leakage. The IR filter is often just a filter mounted right at the aperture of the laser, and could get dislodged without any visible change in laser performance.

Looking right into a green laser with goggles that block only green but not IR would be a dangerous feat in my opinion, even if the goggles provide adequate dampening of the green light.

Bluefan said:

I don't blame glasses for not covering IR, because, in my opinion, only crappy cheap green lasers are unfiltered. Fixing that with goggles is a bit weird. IR covering glasses are handy for things as repairs.
But be sure this glasses can take a direct hit, from what I've seen they melt pretty soon.

Click to expand...

Thank you Benm for saving me some typing.

I agree fully, was about to type the same thing so to speak.

Benm,

It does depends on the application, if IR leakage doesn't matter in a final product, filtering may be too expensive, or just not needed.
But in for example a lab, the IR can be very irritating because ccd camera's still pick it up. And there are enough applications where the IR would disturb measurements or worse.
When working with the green, you get protection for the green. Unless the IR output is listed on the laser itself, nothing warns the end user that his protection against green isn't going to save his eyes.

Filters getting loose is bad quality, a lasers that falls apart that easy won't live long anyway. Looking deliberate into a laser is stupid, but it should be possible for at least 10 seconds, as good safety eyewear protects that long against a direct hit, which would equal just looking into the laser.

But I'm curious, how much IR comes out of the different commercial units? And where would they be used for? I'm not that experienced with a lot of different lasers, most of my experience comes from the university lab.