First, happy father's day to all the dads out there.
Next, take a look at this portion of the FDA regulation on hand held lasers:
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Can battery-operated, portable laser systems be sold in the U.S?
Yes, battery-operated, portable laser systems can be sold in the U.S., providing that they fully comply with the standard, are certified and reported, and are not Class IIIb lasers sold or promoted for pointing or amusement purposes.
People who operate Class IIIb portable laser systems should be familiar with the above ANSI standards for safe use of lasers. This ANSI series of standards includes specific information for the safe use of such laser products in their applications of use.
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These standards apply not to hobbiest. You should read up on this part about amusement purposes. At this time I can't recall exactly how the FDA defines amusement purposes. It may only relate to laser shows.
Now, it seems to me that most of the products we talk about on here are not specifically sold as pointers...and many do have the turnkey safety feature as well as other safety features. Isn't this enough to comply with the FDA standard on class IIIb products that are imported? For example, laserglow touts that all of their products are 100 percent legal to be brought in the u.s. They have safety features out the wazoo. Now let's look at Nova. Their pen style portable lasers better known as the x series have no safety features. This to me means they do not comply and cannot be legally imported into the country. But when you look at Nova's Alpha series...they have a keyswitch, aperature shutter and LED indicator. To me these WOULD seem to comply and therefore be legal to import. Am I way off base here or misunderstaning the regulation?
You understand correctly
One thing is for sure. I'm puttung my purchase on hold until I figure out exactly what I CAN and CAN'T legally have shipped into the country. It really pissed me off yesterday when the DL rep told me they flat out lie to customs in order to get some of their products into the U.S. Not cool. If I have to consider going back over to laserglow and pay a bit more for a legal product then I will. But my hope is that I can stay with Nova and discover that their Alpha series has enough safety to be considered a legal product. What do you think steve001?
As long as the laser you are importing meets FDA standards you're good to go. The required safety features are listed within one of the links I provided or can be found on the FDA or CDRH sites. I forget which specifically though. I had to go through the FDA and CDRH sites to learn all this you can too.
