You can get more gory details about what damage lasers can do from many web sites, including the wikipedia article on laser safety, the laser safety facts web site, and OSHAs guidelines.Im probably best known for things Ive done involving Linux PC cluster supercomputing; I built the worlds first back in.Theyre quite cute, with a laser module that looks like a little laser pointer wrapped in a heat sink.However, that cute little laser is most commonly 300mW, 500mW, or 1000mW.
Thats plenty of power to quickly burn designs into wood -- also more than enough to cause serious injury almost immediately if used in unsafe ways. In the US, I think many people have gotten used to the danger of low-power lasers being overstated. Looking directly into the beam from a Class IIIa laser device, such as laser pointer or laser scanner, could be hazardous to the eyes, but they are otherwise quite safe. The catch is that those devices only deliver between 1mW and 5mW. The laser in your cheap engraver might look like a laser pointer, but it delivers enough power to require very different handling to be safe. Avoid the temptation to try things first and read instructions after a serious problem has surfaced: I didnt even plug-in my lasers power supply until after I had built an enclosure for the unit. Im just a maker who sees the potential, both good and bad, of these little engravers. You bear all responsibility for s afe configuration and operation of your laser. Im writing this Instructable to try to make folks more aware of the potential for serious bad. Actually, this Instructable not only overviews the safety issues and suggests fixes, but also applies improvements that make the machine more consistent and easier to use. There are other ways it could be done, but I took advantage of 3D-printing to make custom parts upgrading the laser engraver -- and Ive made my designs for those parts freely available so you can too. Never forget that you can use your tools to make better tools. Neje Dk 8 Software Download Step 1Add Tip Ask Question Comment Download Step 1: Whats the Worst That Could Happen Before going into the details of how well make the device safer, its useful to get a quick understanding of how much damage misuse of one of these laser engravers could cause. Eye injury: even 14 second accidental direct exposure to the beam of one of these lasers is not considered eye safe unless you are literally at least hundreds of feet away from the laser. It is quite possible to cause severe temporary or permanent vision defects by direct exposure, and even short-term exposure to a scattered (diffuse reflection) of the beam is hazardous. Of course, this also implies that trying to cut anything shiny is a bad idea, because shiny things will scatter a lot of laser light. A 1000mW laser will burn your skin just as easily as it burns wood or leather, and it burns them just about instantaneously. Smoke: the material removed by a laser is burned and, to a great extent, released into the air. There are plenty of things you might think about engraving that you really dont want to be inhaling -- like any material containing chlorine (e.g., Vinyl or PVC). Also dont engrave Polycarbonate, Lexan, nor resincoated materials like Fiberglass (e.g., circuit boards). Even ABS, which isnt all that bad when 3D-printing, produces nasty fumes when laser cut. Venting andor filtering helps, but making good material choices is the best way to minimize problems. There are lots of lists of good and bad materials online: ATX HackerSpace, FabLab Devon, Pololu Robotics Electronics, JR Laser Solutions, etc.
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