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FrozenGate by Avery

Hit in eye with 1000mw 445nm blue laser

First, Good luck xoul! May removal of that clot reveal only the very smallest area of damage possible.

Now to my rant: If I understand whay I'm looking at correctly, xoul has suffered a burn that is fairly close to the center of the macula. Seeing this makes me kinda glad these diodes are multi-mode with pretty crappy beam specs. A well collimated single mode diode running @ 2+ watts would have a NOHD of miles. The statement, "pilots need to be reassured that the chance of eye injury (retinal damage) is practically non-existent" would no longer be true. I haven't heard of anyone hosing down an airplane with one of these class IV 445s yet, but an injury like the one xoul has would be the end of a commercial airline pilot's career. If that were to happen I can well imagine the hue and cry following the news coverage of a pilot or pilots being grounded for life prompting swift and reactionary legislation being passed that would make our hobby much more difficult to pursue.

I think most of those frequenting this forum realize that these lasers are not toys, but they're cheap, and we're not the only ones buying them. Some of them will inevitably and regrettably be purchased by immature a$$holes and used irresponsibly. As diode technology advances and powers go up the risk of our hobby getting regulated to death increases. A couple of serious eye injuries to pilots and/or children will get the kind of press we've all been afraid of seeing.

Our community needs to be self policing as much as possible to put off the day when lasers become regulated as weapons. Be careful about who you sell lasers or parts to. Preach safety and lead by example. If you encounter someone being stupid with a laser, get in their face about it or report them before someone gets hurt and makes all our lives more difficult.
 





WizardG said:
First, Good luck xoul! May removal of that clot reveal only the very smallest area of damage possible.

Now to my rant: If I understand whay I'm looking at correctly, xoul has suffered a burn that is fairly close to the center of the macula. Seeing this makes me kinda glad these diodes are multi-mode with pretty crappy beam specs. A well collimated single mode diode running @ 2+ watts would have a NOHD of miles. The statement, "pilots need to be reassured that the chance of eye injury (retinal damage) is practically non-existent" would no longer be true. I haven't heard of anyone hosing down an airplane with one of these class IV 445s yet, but an injury like the one xoul has would be the end of a commercial airline pilot's career. If that were to happen I can well imagine the hue and cry following the news coverage of a pilot or pilots being grounded for life prompting swift and reactionary legislation being passed that would make our hobby much more difficult to pursue.

I think most of those frequenting this forum realize that these lasers are not toys, but they're cheap, and we're not the only ones buying them. Some of them will inevitably and regrettably be purchased by immature a$$holes and used irresponsibly. As diode technology advances and powers go up the risk of our hobby getting regulated to death increases. A couple of serious eye injuries to pilots and/or children will get the kind of press we've all been afraid of seeing.

Our community needs to be self policing as much as possible to put off the day when lasers become regulated as weapons. Be careful about who you sell lasers or parts to. Preach safety and lead by example. If you encounter someone being stupid with a laser, get in their face about it or report them before someone gets hurt and makes all our lives more difficult.
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You hit the nail right on the head with that. I dread the day that simple possession of a laser over 5mW becomes a crime. What you said about the community needing to police itself is IMO the most important thing you said. If we don't make the effort to do it ourselves the government WILL, and we all know what will happen then.
 
As part of the laser enthusiast self policing effort may I reccomend that we do some outreach and education on other laser forums. I was trolling on the WL community pages (safety section) and I encountered this gem;

"I have a ledlight which have fallen on the ground four times and it's broke. The only thing I get from it is very small amounts of green and some red (or IR) when looked into the aperture. Are the crystals misalligned?"

And no one on that forum called the poster out on this.

I'm going to sign up on that forum in order to remind the readers of
that thread (and especially the original poster) that it's bad to look into a non-functioning DPSS laser. That dim red light can easily amount to 100s of mW of IR @808 to say nothing of the completely invisible 1064. I think it would be awesome to see several dozen of us do the same thing.
 
WizardG said:
As part of the laser enthusiast self policing effort may I reccomend that we do some outreach and education on other laser forums. I was trolling on the WL community pages (safety section) and I encountered this gem;

"I have a ledlight which have fallen on the ground four times and it's broke. The only thing I get from it is very small amounts of green and some red (or IR) when looked into the aperture. Are the crystals misalligned?"

And no one on that forum called the poster out on this.

I'm going to sign up on that forum in order to remind the readers of
that thread (and especially the original poster) that it's bad to look into a non-functioning DPSS laser. That dim red light can easily amount to 100s of mW of IR @808 to say nothing of the completely invisible 1064. I think it would be awesome to see several dozen of us do the same thing.
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WL forums discourage that and they will probably ban people who do that.
They don't like things like science and safety getting in the way of sales.
 
Thank you for sharing your experience. Hopefully at least someone will read it and exercise greater safety when using their laser(s).

I mean no disrespect toward you in what I'm about to say, but more just trying to make a point that we all can learn from.

I going to venture a guess and say that before this happened and your nightmare began you probably felt that something like this could never happen to you, and only happened to idiots who didn't know what the hell they were doing, didn't you?

Well it can happen to anyone at any time. That's why we call them accidents, and there's not a single one of us who is above them.

The extra second that it takes to reach for the goggles isn't really much when contrasted against a lifetime of blindness or impaired vision.

I hope we can all learn something from xoul's nightmare and willingness to share his experience.
 
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Wish you the best of luck! Let us know how things go.
BTW, if you don't mind... why were you not wearing goggles?
Was the laser turned on by accident when falling?

This helps me substantiate why I ordered some $80 OD7+ goggles (link)
 
ekeup said:
Wish you the best of luck! Let us know how things go.
BTW, if you don't mind... why were you not wearing goggles?
Was the laser turned on by accident when falling?

This helps me substantiate why I ordered some $80 OD7+ goggles (link)
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I think he was viewing his liquid sky effect when it happened. He wasn't intending to use it in a handheld way and it was supposed to be a static beam where he knew where it would be at all times.

The same reason you don't wear goggles when using a properly setup laser projector (but you wear them when tuning it, and while confirming the area is clean of shiny things)

He just didn't fully think through the setup of it using a round laser un-clamped. The laser was intentionally on and he was not wearing goggles on purpose and I understand why. Just a silly mistake that will haunt him for the rest of his life. With any luck once they squeegee all the blood out of there most of his central vision will return and only a tiny spot will remain damaged.
 
I agree with the above - when having set up such an effect you'd probably watch the show without goggles. What went wrong in this case is a bit of bad planning, and a lot of bad luck: Surely not securing the pointer was a hazard to begin with, but even so, the chance of it rolling away in fashion that makes it hit you exactly in the eye seems to be extremely unlucky.

This is probably one of these things that ended badly but could have happened to most people, including those that are usually pretty cautions but just forget to think one thing trough one single time.
 
This is an absolutely horror story, especially considering this being a very new hobby of mine. It only takes an instant of negligence to cause permanent damage..similar to my other hobby, firearms. I take firearm safety very seriously, but never considered lasers to be 'as dangerous.' :gun:


well I'm admitting that I was absolutely wrong, and I'm sorry to be selfish but I'm glad someone else made the mistake and not me. I'm going to take laser safety just as serious as firearm safety.

But in reference to those who think he should stay away from lasers until after the surgery.. The only thing a person CAN do is to get back on the horse. I feel like there is no other option than to get back at it, in regards to all things in life. Of course you sit back, assess the situation, make any needed adjustments, then carry on...

I hope you heal up man, the human body is a healing machine. It's capable of some amazing things. You'll be alright, bud. :beer:
 
Missing one step in safety shouldn't let something like this be able to happen, with something as serious as high power lasers I'd want an extra line of defence.

So far I've had 2 accidents with lasers, one with a 2mW 532nm pointer and one with a 2mW HeNe. I've learned of both.
The first one was a mirror falling, the beam swep quickly across my face. So always wear safety glasses and make sure your setup is rigid.
The second one was when I was admiring a laser beam. Considering a 2mW laser isn't that dangerous I didn't wore glasses. I bend over to pick something up and I saw a small flash of light. I was looking straight down so I hardly catched anything of the beam, but it surprised me how easy I made this mistake.

Don't skip on safety, mistakes are easily made and accidents happen, so be prepared.
 
Well, surgery went well. The doc thinks it should clear up pretty good. I have a patch over it now, so I have no idea what to expect. Feels like someone punched me in the eye, but not too painful. I'm going later today to have the patch taken off and follow up, so we'll see what happens then. I was told the eye would be useless for the first few weeks, so I'm not expecting much.
 
xoul said:
Well, surgery went well. The doc thinks it should clear up pretty good. I have a patch over it now, so I have no idea what to expect. Feels like someone punched me in the eye, but not too painful. I'm going later today to have the patch taken off and follow up, so we'll see what happens then. I was told the eye would be useless for the first few weeks, so I'm not expecting much.
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Good to know that it went well. Let us know how it goes friend.
 
Bluefan said:
Missing one step in safety shouldn't let something like this be able to happen, with something as serious as high power lasers I'd want an extra line of defence.

So far I've had 2 accidents with lasers, one with a 2mW 532nm pointer and one with a 2mW HeNe. I've learned of both.
The first one was a mirror falling, the beam swep quickly across my face. So always wear safety glasses and make sure your setup is rigid.
The second one was when I was admiring a laser beam. Considering a 2mW laser isn't that dangerous I didn't wore glasses. I bend over to pick something up and I saw a small flash of light. I was looking straight down so I hardly catched anything of the beam, but it surprised me how easy I made this mistake.

Don't skip on safety, mistakes are easily made and accidents happen, so be prepared.
Click to expand...

The only mistake he really made was to not secure his laser to the surface it was on. Nobody is going to wear safety glasses while watching a liquid sky effect. Now if you're setting it up and tuning everything that is a situation where you need glasses but watching the effect with glasses on would be pretty boring.
 
Dude that was a bummer I hope your peeper fully recovers.

I have a 1.5+ 445 on the way and your shared experience here has convinced me to buy a set of safety specs NOW
 
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