A Practical Guide to Lasers for Experimenters and Hobbyists

http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/laserfaq.htm#faqtoc

by Phithagoras • 10 years ago

162 18 10 years ago

Aelinsaar• 10 years ago

Wow, that's a lot of different resources, and nicely organized. Speaking as a responsible hobbyist who loves to learn about these things, this is a gift, thank you.

Jack000• 10 years ago

something that I can't find much info on is the safety of laser line generators, eg: https://hackaday.com/2016/04/04/smartphone-and-ir-line-laser...

intuitively the beam spread should make it much safer, but I'm still a bit uncomfortable with the idea of a 100mW IR laser, which is what those guys used.

extrapickles• 10 years ago

Its all about how much energy hits the eye, and for infrared lasers you can't assume someone will blink, so you cant use short exposure times.

From the paper, they are pulsing the laser, so the laser is hazardous out to ~1.5m. Pg 5 of their paper goes into detail on the calculations one needs for laser safety.

joshvm• 10 years ago

It seems like they used 100mW IR explicitly so they could use the platform outdoors. In most cases, you're fine looking at the reflected (usually diffuse) light, but you shouldn't stare into the beam. If you're working indoors you should be fine with visible low-power lasers, e.g. 1mW red or green.

There are numbers in the paper (linked in the article) and they explicitly calculate the power vs the safe threshold. They basically say you shouldn't go closer than 1.5m to the device in operation. They give some suggestions to improving that, but it doesn't look like any of them were actually implemented.

sbierwagen• 10 years ago

Sam's Laser FAQ! Ah, the hours I spent reading through this when I was younger.

LeifCarrotson• 10 years ago

There have been many developments in laser technology and many updates to the page since then - check the version history (unfortunately missing dates) and you may spend a few more hours!

http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm#samver

HeyLaughingBoy• 10 years ago

I have to admit I look back at sci.electronics.* and comp.robotics with a lot of fondness.

Florin_Andrei• 10 years ago

I've spent time on Sam's FAQ even when I was somewhat older. :)

weinzierl• 10 years ago

Lasers and the "Holography Handbook: Making Holograms the easy way". It had xkcd style drawings back in the 80s.

GregBuchholz• 10 years ago

Except we called them "Forrest M. Mims" style drawings back then.

https://www.google.com/search?q=forrest+m+mims&source=lnms&t...

drauh• 10 years ago

My go-to was Britney.

http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm

guyzero• 10 years ago

Do not look at laser with remaining eye.

6stringmerc• 10 years ago

Ctrl+F Real Genius: 0

Awww.

Kidding aside, I'm a huge fan of the text/link layout used. So effective. Thanks for showing this.

brianzelip• 10 years ago

Everything except the edge-to-edge text. Put that in a container!

iamleppert• 10 years ago

Laser Sam! He's amazing and has been part of Internet history since the beginning. Everything I love about the web in simple, no-frills HTML.

clock_tower• 10 years ago

Absolutely! It's so good to see real HTML used to organize substantial information, instead of the high-glitz low-content stuff we see so often these days...

djfdev• 10 years ago

This is great! All I could think about was this clip from Parks and Recreation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVq10zG0UdY

JoeMattie• 10 years ago

I love Laser Sam. I acquired some parts from the NOVA project a few years back and sent an email to Sam with some questions I had about what I had purchased. He got back to me within minutes, and was super helpful.

A Practical Guide to Lasers for Experimenters and Hobbyists

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