Art project safety concerns

[shogeki]

Hi,

Me and my friend are building a sound/vision installation using laser to trigger sounds.

We purchased this laser online:

RGB 500mW Laser Module White Laser Beam Combined by 638nm 532nm 450nm TTL Laser | eBay

The idea was to get a white beam, we then realized that it might cause safety issues for two reasons:

- 500nW is way too high to use indoors, the public won't be able to touch or look directly at the laser but even reflections might cause serious harm.

- We cannot filter a white beam with regular safety googles, we would need 2 pairs, or some very pricy lab grade goggles.

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For the time being we are testing / setting up the project with a green 5nW module and some basic red protection goggle.

It would be possible to disable one of the color (R,G or B) in order to disable some wavelength, it seems that anyone seeing the installation would need to wear googles. (which is not optimal since we would still be liable if an accident happens).

Is there a way to make it completely safe or should we just use weaker lasers ?

Thanks for you help !

 

[WizardG]

You may get some other opinions on this but my take is that while you can certainly disable one or two of the colors in the RGB laser you've got, and turn the power down on the remaining color, I think it would be best if you were to get some lower power lasers. Below 5mW for this type of public presentation.

 

[Bionic-Badger]

I'm glad you're taking the safety of your audience seriously. If you can ensure that the beam is about 3 meters above your audience you can probably get away with using it as long as it doesn't reflect off any shiny surfaces and weather doesn't affect it (e.g. rain).

You can also use some method to spread out the beam. You'll still want to prevent direct access to the beam itself, but if it's somewhat spread out on a wall, it won't be as dangerous.

Just turning off one or more of the channels won't really help, as the channels in the laser usually 100mW-200mW which is still dangerous.

Maybe work on restricting people from accessing the area where the beams are? Can you divulge any other details of the project?

 

[shogeki]

That's the thing, basically what we are making is a cage with mirrors, the beam will be controlled to hit different mirrors that will hit other ones to form different shapes. The beam will not go out of the box.

the ideas was to have people walk around that "box", it would roughly be 4 feet by 8 feet.

 

[Lotus_Darkrose]

Sorry, lol.

 

[shogeki]

Here are some pictures of the unit:

https://imgur.com/a/0HFG3

Note that it is class IIIb.

The face annot be unseen