Is there official way to test laser goggles, certifications software?

[willpine]

Hi all
I want a more scientific way of test safety goggles, than shine laser and put infront of lpm. Maybe someone can calculate the od rating from that (i seem to remember a log equation in previous discussions.) But i wanted to be able to see if laser safety goggles would pass CE, en207/8, OD and L rating(?) for laser safety glasses. I know there are testing houses for this (expensive+time) but i wanted to do myself, save money& learn. Are there courses for this, or a certificate to get in USA, Texas? That dont cost an arm and a leg. or does software do it all? I appreciate your time and thoughts. There is a program i ran across "laser safe pc" from lasermet , link:
http://www.lasermet.com/media/Lasersafe PC.pdf
kinda hefty price $595, and i dont know if it would tell me everything i need to know? and what kind of testing equipment i would need? spectrograph, lpm, software? I am hoping someone works at one of these places or has cert. Or does someone know of the places that do actual testing that i could ask (I found most Gov. institutions and major labs certified by gov do them it seems)


Thank You
will

 

[Bluefan]

The EN207 or EN208 certification involves quite a lot, besides testing if it keeps the rated protection for 10 seconds or 100 pulses, it involves:

no Q-Switch-Effect
low dioptrical effects
quality of materials and surface
low stray light < 0,5 cd/m²lx
no secondary radiation
UV-resistance
thermal resistance
field of vision >40°
shatter resistance

And you'll need lots of expensive equipment for this. So get yourself some certified laser safety eyewear, that's probably the only way to be sure you have some quality laser safety eyewear.

 

[willpine]

What about IPL wavelengths? And do you know where to go to get trained? and examples of the expensive equipment? like a grand or less or thousands of $. Do you need a spectrometer? and what else? I wonder how nice/easy universities would be to let you use equipment to test. I wanted to test glasses but wanted to be more scientific than basically just shining a laser in it.

 

[Bluefan]

For measuring the OD you can use a monochromator and a very sensitive photodiode based detector. A tunable laser would have more output than a monochromator so you can measure higher OD's.
For the 10 second or 100 pulses test you a high power laser and a sensitive detector. The OD may not drop below it's rating for the whole 10 sec or 100 pulses.

To go throught he list, this is how I would have tested eyewear if it should be a complete test:
no Q-Switch-Effect:
A short pulse high power laser, if at some point the absorbtion is saturated the material will become transparent. You'll need the appropriate pulsed laser and a detector, a fast photodiode will probably work.

low dioptrical effects:
A large diameter laser will be enough, just look at the far field pattern.

quality of materials and surface:
Easy one, just see if it's build strong.

low stray light < 0,5 cd/m²lx:
This one is difficult to measure,

no secondary radiation:
You'll need a spectrometer to see if any secondary radiation is emitted, and a laser source.

UV-resistance:
A UV source and some time will do

thermal resistance
The oven

field of vision >40°
easy too

shatter resistance
just stand on it and see

 

[willpine]

thanks so much Bluefan for answering. I will check more into what you said and find out how to be a good reviewer. Any more advice or info?

 

[Bluefan]

Around here most review have no measurements at all, so if you plan to do review to post them here, just get a laser power meter. and a few basic lasers. Get a photodiode based power meter with a large dynamic range. Thermal laser power meters usually can't measure more precise than 1mW, and for eyewear testing that's not helping much. Photodiode power meters measure from nanowatts to a few tens of milliwats.
And soon enough you'll buy more equiment, but don't try to do it all at once.