Stop pointing lasers at your goggles!

[styropyro]

I've seen a lot of pictures where people show how much goggles drop the brightness by pointing the laser right into the goggles and taking pictures. I decided to do an experiment.

For the test I used Optotronics green laser goggles. I used the sides of the goggles so it wouldn't damage the front of them. Here is a picture before I pointed the laser at it.

In this picture I have a 170mW green laser pointed at it, I took a picture of the reflection of the light on a counter-top:

As you can see, it is the classic "Laser melting plastic light show". It doesn't take long for the melting plastic light show to appear, so when you guys are pointing lasers at your goggles you are putting little dents into your goggles.

Here are what the dents look like:

If you have done this enough times, your vision through the goggles will be distorted, pretty soon almost as bad as if you pointed the laser in your eye ;D Hopefully this will save of the little $50 investments you have made, so now you know not to point lasers into your goggles!

 

[Petrovski]

Thanks for the heads up styropyro. I'm no expert but I can remember reading something about the dye used in polycarbonate laser goggles will deteriorate when you point a laser beam directly at them for some time. Your experiment confirms this.

 

[Lorgar]

The Goggles will either absorb or reflect the laser light. The more they absorb the faster they will be damaged by direct hits. I had a real cheap set of red enhancment goggles from a laser level that were great for dimming my S-KY so that I could just make the beam out. Only took a 2 second hit to cook a hole through the coating. Now these are not propper safety goggles but they do work well on anything under 100mW they just dont work well on 300+mW. I wouldnt even try putting goggles in front of my 808nM as I would probly just ignite them.

 

[ardyp]

made the same with my nova sport shield and get the same result... :'(



Do not point on your goggles!

 

[VillageIdiot]

You could use a 5mW and compare the two dots, a 5mW will take a while to burn anything and makes a decent dot to compare doesn't it?

 

[Ace82]

I thought that was common sense. I knew not to do that without ever being told. A green laser can also pop a red balloon almost like it was black. A red laser can pop a green balloon. The goggles are designed to filter a specific range of wavelength but let all others pass, therefore it must absorb the unwanted (dangerous) light wavelength, unlike a mirror which reflects all light. However, the goggles will still reflect a percentage of all light, including the green mainly because of it’s surface.

 

[tomius]

Thanks for this info, without that i surely would try what happens if i point to my goggle...