Laser Goggles vs. Touchscreen colour scheme

Hi @staff,

wearing the green saftey goggles I find it difficult to discriminate blue and white elements on the touch screen. Would it be possible to change the colour scheme on the touch screen, ideally user defined?

Thanks!

Hauke

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That is an excellent idea - with the laser module attached they could offer just a single button to toggle the UI colors from a selected ā€œno goggleā€ to ā€œgoggleā€ contrast mode.

Itā€™s important to note that the Goggles included are green and in my opinion not protective enough. Most of the goggles rated for 1.6 wats laser of this wavelength are red tinted rather then green. See this thread for more information on proper laser PPE Rating of 1600mW laser and glasses

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Hi @Atom,
I think the color is no indication - but what bothers me is that tehre are to my knowledge no official statements as to the rating of the glasses, in terms of optical density at 450nm wavelength.
Another thing I consider a bit as an oversight is that the goggles are green while the enclosure is orange - which means that in visible light with goggles on you can basically see nothing through the enclosure walls because of this color mismatch. The enclosure filteres out everything but orange light, which means that no green light is left to filter through the green glasses. More or less. Stupidā€¦
Iā€™ll purchase two more goggles anyhow (EN certified!) - in orange - since I want to be able to have visitors watch the cool device do itā€™s magic :slight_smile:
Cheers
Hauke

@Hauke This is the official statement, and you are correct color is not an indication. I only mentioned they were green because it is unusual for 550nm safety glasses to be green, most are red/orange, so the screen should have a visibility mode for both types.

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Not so goodā€¦ The shiny metal screws of the laser bed could reflect the beam directly, also some mounting material like magnets or soā€¦ I admit that the likelihood of a direct reflection into your eye is considerably low, but I prefer ā€œbetter safe than sorryā€ strategy. Another reason to shop for proper gogglesā€¦

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Always loved that graphic. :wink:

Yeah, ā€œtransmittanceā€ values are pretty useless - they tell you more about how much you can see wearing them (how good of ā€˜sunglassesā€™ they are) than anything about the laser safety.

OD 1.19 isā€¦nothing. Most glasses you see targeted at actually helping are OD4 or above for the desired wavelengths.

And am I reading your further quote rightā€¦their supplier TESTED at the WRONG WAVELENGTH for this laser??

I just ordered a couple pair myself and went serious, from a real optical engineering supply house not risking my peepers on who-knows-where-from Amazon stuff even. Probably overkill, but went with an OD 6+ formula from 200-500nm. (And yes, I have the enclosure too, but I need to add a couple shields along the long bottom edge since it slightly overhangs the deskā€¦even if I canā€™t get hit I have a cat that might be tempted to chase the beam if it were to scatter out some.)

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Correct it was never tested at 450 only 550 so the OD at 450 is not known, by anyone. Some of Snapmakerā€™s safety policies really concern me, so i just try to make sure everyone has the information they need to protect themselves.

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@rtrski Care to share a link to what glasses you ordered? Thank you!

You might not thank me. Theyā€™re not cheap, like 3X the ones you find on Amazon. And I honestly donā€™t know how much of that is just the ā€˜formally testedā€™ markup, a New Jersey markup, or price gouging. But they provided good real specs and I just didnā€™t search that hard beyond finding a couple places that were in the same 150-190 USD ballpark.

Three of their seriesā€™ cover the right wavelength range, I went with the LG3 series.
https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id=762

Be patient with their website, itā€™s slow as molasses for me right now. Donā€™t know if they have a specific hosting issue or if thereā€™s more going on over ā€˜teh internetsā€™ todayā€¦

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Thanks again for the info, @rtrski

The 150-200 range is still much cheaper than the fallout of an accident. Iā€™m sure there is some degree of markup due to the brand name as well. Hooray capitalism!

I noticed on the ā€œCertificate of Conformityā€ they mention the manufacturer of the shield: NoIR.
Specifically the ARG shield.

They sell a variety of sizes directly:
https://noirlaser.com/arg.html

Hope that helps!

-ODINITE

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The YLW shield might also be an option (a bit more expensive ($130) than the ARG shield ($100) at NoIR) based on the OD graphs. However, it provides no protection above 500nm. I do not know enough about lasers to give a recommendation of the ā€œbandwidthā€ above and below 450nm that should be ideally blocked out.

https://noirlaser.com/ylw.html

-ODINITE

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Both good finds, thanks! Looks fairly legit and definitely cheaper than what I picked. Live and learn.

I think the lasers in use here might have the center of the operational band fluctuate a tiny bit in wavelength over manufacturing variations, thermal profile, and lifetime, like a few single-digit nm. 3dB bandwidth might be as wide as 10-15nm, depending. But theyā€™re not going to go from a center around 450nm to >500nm.

Depending on what you cut I donā€™t know if thereā€™s other spectral emissions that might be strong enough to cause eye damage either. I kind of suspect not but for CO2 and much stronger lasers that probably becomes more of a consideration.

Incidentally Iā€™m trying my first laser cut now and am a little less paranoid. I didnā€™t reckon on how wide diameter the hood is. With the hood at roughly 2.5mm above the workface unless youā€™re nearly co-height with the workface you canā€™t really even see much indirect much less direct light. Iā€™m trying the ā€˜gift boxā€™ program that came with it on a sheet of ~1.65mm (1/8in) ply first. It did default to ā€œ2 passesā€ while also having the cut depth set to 0.6mm which didnā€™t make sense, so I bumped it to 3. Weā€™ll see if I made a boobooā€¦

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