Anonymous Poll: Do You Wear Safety Glasses Inside?

Please be honest. I just want to get an idea for how many of us ACTUALLY use our safety glasses on a regular basis. This poll will be completely anonymous, so no one will know your dark secret. Pick the option that best describes your glasses wearing habits.

Everybody waxes eloquent/severe about safety. I am just curious how much of that is true or hypocritical. I'll be the first to say i don't wear mine nearly as often as I should.

Cheers,
Isaac

Me too, not as often as I should. I like to see the beam but I don't look at the dot if its just shinning across the room.

Alan

I voted never. I know if you vote you don't have to come out and say it and it's 100% fine if you remain anonymous as "IT" said.

When I had my 500mW 532nm I admit I never wore glasses, and was at times of a few inches from the dot while burning stuff. After that I decided to avoid anything of that power for at least awhile

-Alex

You don't have an option for "only when doing alignment or calibration"

Hmm....true. Put the only when burning stuff then as it is a similar idea.

You should have included more options since you decided to use a short list to choose from. One might be " I only use my safety glasses when I am doing something where the ability of eye damage is far more likely than not." Or, " I use my safety glasses when doing optical experiments with a laser." I won't just leave this anonymous because you haven't given enough options to choose from. I own four pair of safety glasses, but only use them when the chance of an accidental eye exposure is possible. This is rarely the case when I am using a laser of any power. When setting up an optical bench for making holograms is a good example of when I will use them. I rarely try to light anything on fire, so that is not even an option for me. My careful respect for the laser when using one doesn't make me feel like I fit in the brail class either. In other words, the questions are jaded and reflect an obvious prejudice in favor of using safety glasses all the time, or at least most of the time.

Considering right now I only have a 30mW 473... No, I don't use them.

For when I had high powered ones: I'd use mine for the rare instances I burned stuff, though it was most often for when I was taking pictures and whatnot. I'll usually use the lasers outside or in a room with literally nothing reflective without goggles. (Minus the 3.5W, that was not used indoors for fear of repainting/repaneling. Only times I did was for quick battery check/photo session at the longest distance across the basement.)

paul1598419 said:

You should have included more options since you decided to use a short list to choose from. One might be " I only use my safety glasses when I am doing something where the ability of eye damage is far more likely than not." Or, " I use my safety glasses when doing optical experiments with a laser." I won't just leave this anonymous because you haven't given enough options to choose from. I own four pair of safety glasses, but only use them when the chance of an accidental eye exposure is possible. This is rarely the case when I am using a laser of any power. When setting up an optical bench for making holograms is a good example of when I will use them. I rarely try to light anything on fire, so that is not even an option for me. My careful respect for the laser when using one doesn't make me feel like I fit in the brail class either. In other words, the questions are jaded and reflect an obvious prejudice in favor of using safety glasses all the time, or at least most of the time.

Click to expand...

Im sorry if my answers are a bit limited, the hologram thing did not even occur to me. The brail keyboard thing was simply meant to be a joke. I myself only use my safety glasses about 40% of the time I am using them up close. Most of my lasers are low power, so it does not bother me, but I should be more careful with my 3W'ers.

I do wear protection (eye) quite often. I have many low powered lasers that I don't use any protection with though.

ARG said:

You don't have an option for "only when doing alignment or calibration"

Click to expand...

paul1598419 said:

You should have included more options since you decided to use a short list to choose from.

Click to expand...

Agreed
I picked the glasses everywhere option, but it's a bit more complicated than that. It boils
down to power, distance, reflectivity, density, and the degree to which these are known before
powerup.

Say we have a 3W laser on which we have just installed a lens and the light will be striking a
white surface less than 1m away. Since the focus and thus power density is unknown at this
point, reflectivity and power are high, and the distance is short, I would don the safety
glasses. The same setup with no lens would drastically reduce the power density and thus
LSGS would probably not be needed. Just remember you can't be too careful and don't
underestimate your own stupidity.
:tinfoil:

Most of the time I don't wear eye protection, but that's because most of the time I'm shining the beam onto the dark carpet for a second or so out of boredom, or shining my Rigel around my bedroom at night, or lastly, sky pointing. None of these situations need goggles as a) its primary purpose is to enjoy the output of the laser and b) you can mitigate the risk without needing to put on goggles. My goggle advice is in keeping with this as well.

There are rare situations in which I always wear the goggles because of the greatest risk. These are during photography sessions and the rare occasion that I do burn, or when I want to watch the laser mode hop. A lot of my photography sessions have had me being covered in beams and in actual fact I have been struck by a very weak runaway split beam, which served as a healthy reminder to be even more careful. I actually spent almost as much on safety as I did on the lasers and it's worth it despite relatively rare use.

About the best option I can select on the poll is "when burning".

EDIT: I see my sentiment on the matter is almost an exact replica of Raffle's.

I mostly wear goggles when working on lasers in a situation that could result in a sudden nasty reflection. This could be something like adjusting mirrors when combining beams, or fitting optics to laser diodes/modules for the first time.

Another situation where i prefer to use them is when looking head-on into a laser show under test - just in case the galvo's freeze up in some position pointing directly at me and no protection circuitry i present to power down the laser in such incidents (obviously such setups shoud not be used on an audience).

Any close range stuff/burning= goggles, but in general, not really. They are meant to be last-resort safety's anyway, if you are careful you really shouldn't need them all that much, especially higher OD goggles that have low VLT, you might have more of a problem with obstacles than laser beams

Looks as though I fall into the majority as well.

Should also be an option for handhelds vs stationary lasers. I always use goggles when operating high power handhelds indoors. Not a problem for stationary lasers, as long as they are diffused, bolted down and have the beam path marked no goggles are needed.

I've always said people around here overuse the "use goggles all the time" thing. Glad to know I was right and most people were just hypocritical.

Here's what I do:
-With <100mW I never use goggles, unless it's a 405nm and I want to see stuff fluoresce.
-With <500mW I only use goggles when burning.
-With class 4 I use goggles when burning and most of the time when pointing them around inside the house. I'll admit I have looked at the dot of my 3W from about 3m away on a white wall but it's so bright it isn't even fun. I do have the habit of pointing high power lasers at the ceiling and looking at the colored walls with interference dots, but that's perfectly safe