Quoted:
a) Your blink response to a visible laser will save you every time. Even the "high power green lasers" available on the internet aren't strong enough to beat this. Especially at any real range. MAYBE (I haven't done the math on this particular case) it could be a problem if you are looking right at one through optics.
|
Part of the laser safety classification system is loosely based on whether the human blink reflex can operate fast enough to prevent damage. Normal lasers less than 5 milliwatts in the visible range should be incapable of causing damage before the blink reflex kicks in. Lasers in the next class, from 5 to 500 milliwatts, are assumed to be able to do some damage before the blink reflex would kick in. The next class, 500 milliwatts and up, is likely to do severe damage before the blink reflex kicks in.
Currently, there are handheld DPSS laser pointers that put out a green beam at 300-400 milliwatts. This is enough to pop baloons from a distance with no focusing--and will easily vaporize whatever part of the retina the eye's lens focuses it down to well before blink reflex kicks in.
A 300 milliwatt green DPSS Laser uses about a 1 watt IR laser diode to drive the secondary (green) laser system. Eliminating the green laser system, and using IR optics to produce a properly collimated IR beam, you could have a 1 watt laser which will not cause a blink reflex, but which will do severe damage to the eyes, and will probably be able to cause heat effects out to a pretty decent range.
The question is, I suppose, whether you'd rather cause permant damage that might not be immediately incapacitaging (in which case you'd use high power IR) or if you want to cause damage and dazzling reaction that will cause immediate incapacitation, in which case high power visible lasers are better. Someone posted a link some time ago about a new potential police/military non-lethal weapon that was a rapidly scanned or modulated green laser with a dispersed beam. Bright enough to dazzle, but with power and scan/modulation levels (time averaged) low enough to avoid the likelihood of permanant damage.
b) It's the IR lasers that are a problem. You don't know that you are being hit so there is no blink response. These things are not a common item, even among the tinfoil wearing green laser crowd.
|
If you buy the right IR optics, any green DPSS laser will become an IR laser with about double the power output. The re-design is not trivial, but it is possible that someone with the Melles-Griot catalog (which includes loads of good technical information) could do so in a short amount of time.
Jim