Laser radiation question

A DVD burner laser is definitely capable of serious eye damage. Ordinary laser pointers are pretty harmless but something like he's put together is illegal to point around outside, it can cause retinal burns faster than you can blink or look away. It takes quite a bit of damage before you start to notice anything is wrong.

Lasers found in recent DVD writers are in excess of 100mW and will destroy parts of the retina in a fraction of a second, you won't get a second chance and it won't heal. They can burn paper, melt plastic, light matches and burst balloons etc so imagine what happens when the beam is focused onto a retina...

Your friend should already know or have researched this if he's a 'very competent engineer', and he wouldn't be flashing it around outside! Lasers are not a sensible pasttime for the unwary or those cavalier about safety.

Morse

I'm sure the glasses have to be for a specific wavelength. I would imagine the CD lasers are near red radiation, but it depends on the receptors best wavelength to transmit power.

I was playing around with a blue laser, 100 mw a couple weeks ago. Not really playing around, but was interesting and cost about $15K.

Those green pen lasers are pretty cheap now, and are great for fooling around pointing at night. much brighter than red, and my red 535nm laser is the brightest red I have. I do want to get my own green.

Playing around with high powered lasers is about like pointing a BB gun around. Don't put their eyes out !!

greg

You're correct to be worried. DVD burner laser diodes can be as much as 50 times more powerful than a legal laser pointer (5 mW).

Even a momentary flash in the eye at close range can cause permanent damage.

There are laser safety goggles that can be worn, but they aren't cheap or terribly fashionable. :)

More in the Laser FAQ.

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Thanks for the advice everybody, we will act accordingly and get adequate eye protection before continuing any experiments.

Cheetah

He's an idiot and an asshole and so are you for posting off topic messages.

I have sent an abuse complant to snipped-for-privacy@easynews.com.

Abuse complant sent to: snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net.

Reason: responding to an off topic post, therefore, spamming a newsgroup.

Forwarded to snipped-for-privacy@imap.pitt.edu

Reason: Participating in spamming a newsgroup.

Forwarded to: snipped-for-privacy@upenn.edu

Reason: Replying to SPAM in newsgroup and additionally SPAMming newsgroup with URL.

Can I forward your post to snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org because you're an idiot?