What are you all doing for laser cutting glasses?

Hello!

We have a new fiber disc laser, runs around 1030nm and 6KW. Our machine's windows are proper filtering windows but with a rather high VLT, but it's still a rather bright process and operators are complaining about the headaches and vision spots.

I know a little about OD protection, I used to play with DVD, bluray and other high powered lasers. What I'm unsure of is how much help adding a second set of high VLT glasses with ~+6OD protection around our working wavelength would actually be.

I found these glasses in a quick google search, I'm sure they'd be great for working up close and personal with the laser module but I'm unsure how much of the eye strain comes from the laser light and how much comes from the light of vaporizing metals. It seems I would want to look for a set of glasses with lower VLT and extra protection around 600nm or so. These are 10% VLT and it seems they pretty much only pass around 600nm!

https://www.lasersafety.com/product/p5l07/

I do know throwing on a set of welding shades actually makes the situation worse for visible wavelength lasers as they force your eyes to dilatate and the shields themselves are lacking on OD around the common visible laser wavelengths, I don't want to order an expensive set of shades and find that's happened...


What are you all doing for protection while configuring cutting parameters initially, watching for popped parts, and other common laser cutting operations?

Thanks in advance for any and all advise!

A can of spam has a couple of nice tabs to affix the string to keep it
on your head, in front of your eyes.

No nasty laser beams getting thru.....

However, this thread should "Bounce Google hits" nicely eh ?

I was the laser supervisor for the largest stainless consumer in CA and we had a few Salvagnini lasers. Fiber lasers, can't look at the beam, and a Cincinnati CL-707 that you could look at the beam. I had one 'injury' at the company from our newest laser. Thing had been giving problems left and right, the downtime must have been close to 70% for the first few months. One night I checked on it and the head was bobbing in Z axis very fast above the material, which was a #4 finish stainless, moderately good reflection. I was behind the glass looking in to see what was going on for a few seconds and it's like out of nowhere I was staring at the sun. Headache, big white spot in vision... man was I scared! Minus a small hole in center all 3.3 KW were just reflecting off the top of the material!

All said and done, no permanent damage (or noticeable damage). The glass protected me so it was only safe light I was seeing, but bright. This was the pudding in which lay the proof - the glass itself only passes safe light through, what you're seeing is safe visible light of varying brightness. A simple pair of lightly tinted safety glasses should be all you need if it still appears too bright. If the light wasn't safe it would be almost instantaneous blindness with a hazardous wavelength at operators' distance.

EDIT: Talk with the manufacturer of the laser and ask what they say. Generally laser light is either safely visible, or very hazardous, and the construction of the machine's safety systems reflects that. KNOW the answer.

I put a piece of 50% window tint on the inside of the closest laser window, film not removed, just stuck on by static. It really kills of lot of the glare, and is still bright enough to see by. 2K IPG fiber, I'm pretty sure the original windows were just tinted acrylic, as they had no markings and were showing a lot of color. I really don't recommend trusting Chinese laser windows.