has your laser ever gotten you into trouble?

[ixfd64]

I'm just wondering, has anyone here ever gotten into trouble due to using their lasers? I'm proud to say that I've never been in any real trouble, but I've had a few close calls.

Safety incidents:

1. I was showing off my 35 mW laser at a college dance, and somebody asked to borrow it. To my horror, he immediately pointed the laser into an occupied dorm room (across the courtyard) to "prank his friend." I told him that this was a bad idea, so he decided to point it at an unoccupied room instead. However, it still wasn't a smart thing to do because there was no way of knowing when some unlucky person might enter the room. Fortunately, he wised up and agreed to stop.

2. I was at another dance, and a different person asked to use my 35 mW laser. This guy was smart enough to not point it at any rooms, but he was shining the laser through a window and did not realize that part of the beam was being reflected right into another guy's face. Funnily enough, the other person never even noticed it!

3. There was a fire drill at my school, and I was showing off my laser. A girl told me to try pointing it at the airplane that was passing overhead. :banghead:

I'm glad nobody was hurt in any of those three incidents, but I've decided to stop letting other people use my laser.

"Authoritative" incidents:

1. I was at yet another dance, and I had brought along my 35 mW laser as usual. While there, I met a fellow "laserist" who told me that he used to have a green laser as well. However, his tone quickly changed; he told me that my laser was illegal and implied that he would report me to the cops. I used the laser anyway, and surprisingly, nothing happened.

2. I was at a party/social in my residential unit. As you've probably guessed, I was again showing people my 35 mW laser. A resident assistant (RA) then told me that it was illegal to have that laser out. Funnily enough, the guy in charge of security was totally cool with me using the laser. Nevertheless, I did not want to argue with the RA, as he could probably write me up for it.

3. This one was the scariest. I was using my Spyder at an outdoor country event in a state park. A guy claiming to be an FBI agent then threatened to confiscate my laser. I soon realized that the guy was probably fake, but I decided to put my laser away just to be on the safe side. I did report the guy for impersonating a federal agent, though.

 

[jeffreythe00]

I voted yes because i live with my parents who hate my lasers. they somehow think i am going to burn the house down. Anyhow they yell at me everytime they see me using them indoors and threaten to kick me out. I would consider that "trouble". But i never was in "trouble" with them. I did however have 1 close call.

I was with my sister and my friend and we all had green lasers, all of them 100mw+.

We were walking around the city and shining them all over. It was about 11 pm and we knew no people would be walking the streets. So anyhow we were on a back road and there was a "T" in the road. We were in the bottom of the t and i thought it would be funny to shine my executive pro in the middle of the intersection. There was a car coming and before it got to the middle i turned it off as not to blind traffic. When the car turned passed by the intersection we realised it was the police. My heart "SUNK!". I quickly put away my laser and they just slowed down, almost to a halt as if to see where it was being shined from. Luckily they did not stop us. Im sure we would not have gotten in trouble because the police are pretty fair here but you never know.

Another time i was showing my laser off at work and i gave it to a guy who i knew was careful with lasers. He was shining it on the floor by some other employees. The guy he was shining it near knew it burned stuff and later that day he told our company foreman that "we were trying to burn him". We never actually came close to him but we both almost lost our jobs. Our foreman told me (because the laser was mine) that if he seen me with the laser again, i would lose my job. I had actually got caught with it again while i was playing with it on break and was immediately told the same story.

That was probally the only time i had ever gotten in trouble with lasers or atleast close.

Its pretty rare when i show them to the public because i dont want to lose them.

Anyhow i just thought id share my story with everyone since some1 else did.

Remember to be careful and think about what your doing with your lasers!

 

[kiyoukan]

The worst my laser has ever done to me was attract the sheriff at a lake. i was pointing out star clusters and constellations, and the sheriff wanted to know what it was.
at 10pm on a lake he had nothing better to do.
445nm blue is super bright.

 

[Moptsp]

I voted yes because i live with my parents who hate my lasers. they somehow think i am going to burn the house down.

Same here! I don't know what they're thinking. It's not like the first thing you point it at bursts into flames lol. At least not with the lasers I have. :gun:

 

[hakzaw1]

I sold an overspec greenie to a friend- who in turn got 6 on eekbay, and in turn sold 5 of them at MardiGras Galveston four years ago-- they were on a balcony overlooking the Strand and of course drinking and several of the fools were lighting up girls down on the street which of course drew the cops.

They came upstairs to this private party- had our DJ stop the music and announced that the next incident would cause them to shut our party down and take the green lasers. (a balcony costs around $2000 for two nights)After they left all except one agreed to comply-- the biggest fool of them all demanded his 40$ back if he was not able to do as he wanted.. he got the refund and it was re-sold in 10 minutes....and the rest of the night went on w/o probs.

I sold a few dozen of them a few years back and printed a half page of Dos and Don'ts and made every buyer read it aloud to me. most of the lasers died because they forgot to follow the duty/rest part of the Don'ts. Prolly for the best IMO

 

[Dnl747]

Yes I have.
I showed my friend two types of lasers (One was a flash light style, and one was a pen style focusable, both were violent)
and let him borrow one, now the other one (the flashlight style) didn't work, and I let him have it, now he was doing fine with them, I explained him the dangers of the lasers, and he said he wasn't going to use them in school (this was at the bus stop)

Now he took it out, and start shining it at the floor in the gym lockers, when he start to get attention, a lot...
I guess the attention got to him, and shinned the laser at a mirror, which reflected through another piece of glass, which was the gym teachers office, and hit the coach straight in the neck, now he didn't notice, but the other coach did. I walked away in panic, not wanting to be part of it , but he assumed it was me, and pointed straight at me
"COACH, HIM RIGHT THERE HE SHOT A LASER AT YOU"
I was so nervous, I was like "wtf"

So I showed them my pockets I was clear, the rest of the people in the gym all got involved, and got into the circle.
the coaches blocked off the restroom, until one of the 8 or so boys, would come clean. Till finally my friend did come clean, and they took the laser.
Now, did I loose my 80 mW violet laser? No.
Because he gave him the broken flash light style one instead
The coach proceeded to ask him "why doesn't it work"
I guess he picked up some of the warnings after all, but turned it into a convenient lie.
he told the coach that it didn't work, because he touched the front of the lens. LOL. And the funnier thing was that, he became really sad after wards, because I could tell, he really wanted it, because when he took the laser from him, he said.

"Whoo I got my self a new laser, a nice one too!"
than it went to
"Aww bullshit I broke my new laser"

So lesson learned, never let him borrow a laser again.

Oh and also, this kid sitting next to me, pointed a 50 mW (it was from amazon, probably under speced)
at the principle, thank god he got it confiscated.

 

[aryntha]

When I was about 9 years old, my brother and I were shining a relatively weak HeNe (parted out from a grocery store scanner, and "mounted" in of all things - a cardboard box - this had to be the most ghetto host ever) - out the window. We lived in a relatively rural area. Maybe 1mW, if that. But, at that time, diode lasers were unheard of, and just having a coherent beam of light at any brightness or color was amazing.

It was raining lightly and we just thought it was cool that we could see the beam in the mist. We had the lights off in my room, and were just shining it around - really no lights to be seen at all in the woods except for the laser.

That changed as we saw headlights. A car came down the road from behind the trees, and we quickly scrambled to pull the laser out of the window, but then suddenly this blast of white light lit up our room.

It was a cop - he was shining his spotlight at our house, and at my window. Being as young as we were - well, I don't think we had been quite that scared at all in our lives yet. We were both hiding below the window, just wondering what the cop would do next.

The cardboard box had fallen open and the HeNe's plasma lit up our room just enough that I thought we'd be seen... (Though he must have known the laser had come from that window...) But I still remember trying to decide whether to move or unplug the thing. I stayed still.

Somehow, by some miracle, after what seemed like an eternity, the white light just went out. The cop had turned off his spotlight, and continued on his way. He didn't even approach our front door, or talk to our parents. To this day I think it's crazy that he didn't.

Now yeah, this sounds a little odd to be talking about now, but at 9 years old, nearly getting in trouble to that degree was quite the scare. I remember I kept the 'cardboard HeNe' under my bed for what must have been 8 months before touching it again. Eventually my dad took it and threw it out because the 'voltage was too dangerous' (he was right) and I wouldn't see another laser again until maybe 5-6 years later when I got my Uniphase 1508 from Edmund.

So I guess I learned real early and real fast to not just point lasers around at whatever-the-hell.

 

[Xplorer877]

... yeah, with the FDA.

-Tony

 

[Razako]

... yeah, with the FDA.

-Tony

that happened back in 2005? What laser were you trying to import and what eventually happened?

 

[jbtm]

So far no, hope to keep it this way I use my lasers indoors only, and if I ever do outside, I use it when I (or a friend) are the only ones around. Any time I see people coming, I avoid using my lasers because where I live, no one has lasers, maybe very few with 5mw dollar store ones. So I like to keep it to my self, and not have random people see green/blue/violet lasers and start to ponder whats going on.

Hope to keep clean, but you never know I guess...Life is always random.

@jeffreythe00
My parents say that all the time...Even my friends parents. "Dont burn the house down!!!" I hear it almost every week. Not because of lasers, but because of high voltage arcing...Tesla coils...capacitors...All that stuff. I find it funny. My Dad still thinks Tesla coil + huge output = EXTREMELY HIGH ELECTRIC BILL! I keep telling him it only uses about 300W for about a minute at a time. Far less than my 1KW drill press, and much less than Thanks giving, cooking a ham in the microwave for long period of time with a 1200W microwave. Not easy to teach parents new things My electrical teacher laughed so hard when I told him my dad saw my coil and thought it was wasting hundreds of dollars xD He gave me a phone and looked at the meter and said to turn it on xD Anyways...They do hate my lasers. I just dont count it as getting in trouble because they don't punish me...

 

[LaserCo]

case 1)
I was at a Bob Dylan concert with the crowd on the embankment to the side of the crowd with a hene I had built into an emptied machine gun / squirt gun which was hidden within a backpack.
The event was called Riverfest.
I was shining it over people's heads of course.
All the sudden two plainclothed guys were upon me, one says "there he is!"
They say they are sheriff's, I said "prove it" and they moved their jackets enought to show me the badges they wore, (poor guys! it was so hot and humid! LOL) they said with The Terminator movie's laser that I am scaring the hell out of some people (this was way before laser pointers existed) they told me to get up which I did. one had grabbed my laser while the other tried to lead me along as he had grabbed my elbow saying they are taking me to their station.

I said there is no reason to make a scene over this in public, I said its like you have my laser that I spent a lot of time building and it's YOU that are not going to get away from ME! so he let go and I followed them to their little trailor house on-site police station.
They told me to come and get my laser on my way out of the event and not to ever bring it back, when I returned on my way out the cop (not one of the ones before) as he walked towards me kept clicking the trigger on and off till he eventually clicked so hard he broke the trigger.

The laser was later stolen from me in a cave by a bunch of baseball bat and high powered maglite bearing young thugs who I am positive later within a short time murdered a guy in the same cave. We are lucky to be alive, one thing though, for me, it was impossible to stand facing with my back to them. I demanded the police to persue on my evidence and was threatened by the cheif.

case 2)
Same police department, same area in general
I had my ion RGB projecter running nicely, I was projecting Bart Simpson out onto the brown bricked building acrosss the street from me thru my bedroom window, I noticed a police car had pulled up down below and he shouted up at me "what in the hell is that?" to which I replied "It's my laser projector!"
He said "Damn that is cool!" and drove off

Myrtle Beach last month ago was so cool, I only had my green laser that SenKat sent to me as a bonus to my order but the thing is bright! And on the beach one of the nites there were 7 lasers going, all green, between the beach people and the hotel balconies, everyone seemed to know to rapidly scan if approaching a persons head.

Beach combing was SO Fun!

 

[Xplorer877]

that happened back in 2005? What laser were you trying to import and what eventually happened?

Yeah I bought a CNI built 60mW Aries (although it wasn't called Aries back then) from Laser Glow and even though I did receive it I was sent a letter from the FDA that it shouldn't have been delivered and I needed to hand it over. After a few letters back and forth I was able to convince them to allow me to return it myself for a refund and provide proof that I did so. Thankfully that's what happened. I was almost out 500 bucks, yeah they were very expensive back then. Since then I've always been sketchy about importing >5mW lasers.

-Tony

 

[Cenobite9]

No trouble yet and hope to keep it that way. Even though I usually carry at lest one homemade pointer on me when I go out I almost never use it. I do use my 405 and 445 lasers in the club I go to but only as long as it's okay with the manager (who also happens to own a very powerful green laser). I like lighting up the mirror ball in the middle of the club... but I always make sure I hit the top of the ball so all reflections go upward into the ceiling (which is non-reflective flat black) and not into the crowd.

 

[psi seeker 34]

I was "helping" with a puppet show for my church however since I wasn't really doing anything helpful I pulled out my dollar store <5mw red laser pointer and began pointing it at the puppeteers backs. One of the older puppeteers confiscated it claiming it was distracting. She promised that I could have it back after the performance however she gave it to the youth director instead and proceeded to tell of my misdeeds. After which she told me she had given it to the youth director and I had to go to her in order to get it back. Knowing that I most likely wouldn't get my $1 laser back and that they couldn't prove it was me I accepted the loss as payment for getting off scot free.

Btw my parents have been worried that I would burn the house down ever since I was old enough to walk. Though lasers are the least of my parents worries considering my science experiments,fire works,and over all dangerously high IQ .

 

[Trevor]

My RA's don't mind my lasers (even the monster green) as long as I fire them up in a controlled environment.

...but burning things kind of flips them out.

-Trevor

 

[laser_freak]

Just recently I was playing around with my 445, drooling at the amazingly bright beam (it was very foggy). I started setting off some fireworks with it, but here in Maine most fireworks are illegal. I also happen to live less than a half a mile away from the police station. I soon saw a cop car slowly driving through our neighborhood trying to figure out who had set the fireworks off. I immediately put the laser away and tried to bring my stash of fireworks back into my garage. Even though there was a huge cloud of smoke hovering above my house from all the fireworks, the cop kept driving past my house.

BTW, fireworks in dense fog look amazing.