Anyway, common sense says you don't look with your unprotected eye through a fiber endpoint.
Big pewpews require big power and it's not super practical yet
The end of the article mentions another system, HELIOS, but didn't have much more information, and that was only two units, I think?
I believe you, just wondering how widespread these are relative to traditional projectile weapons.
I've read that the main reason they like it is more about the incredible long range optics and not the laser, tbh.
It'd be a rather short range weapon, that's not easy to aim, require a line-of-sight, can't penetrate armor... or goggles, or fog/dust.
They're "intended" to cause only temporary blindness
Aside the sci-fi vibe, I could imagine James Bond esque - still quite hard to use, has to aim for the eyes, scatter can cause collateral damage, doesn't work in fog, rain, etc.
Blinding laser weapons are in the same category.
Chemical weapons are incredibly useful, just awful.
https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
They're not. They're effective against an unprepared adversary. Any real military will have anti-chemical-weapons tactics and protection.
So this happens: you douse a building with a gas, and then walk inside and get shot by defenders in gas masks. And by the way, you also will have to wear a gas mask yourself.
The idea was to mess up scope optics, but human heads have lenses too. It was not Geneva Conventions friendly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_W...
Never had one of those toys…
It's part joke and part telling people "hey, this stuff is really dangerous, take it seriously or you'll lose an eye, or both". I don't think I've seen a single lab with high-powered lasers that didn't have a variant of this sign.
A similar popular sign for chemical labs is "Carol Never Wore Her Safety Goggles. Now She Doesn't Need Them", depicting a blind woman with sunglasses and a white cane. (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/carols-safety-goggles)
I guess depending on your political agenda they were either trying to be inclusive and promoting gender diversity in STEM, or they were being subtly misogynistic by implying that women aren't as careful as men.
Or maybe it was just arbitrary and maybe we don't have to read anything into it? But what do I know.
Nah, I actually believe it's the first one. That's why it's so hilarious. The irony is what it insinuates about what happens to women in STEM.
Women outnumbered men in my chemistry course.
And they both use substances that would destroy your eyes.
On a serious note: What are you on about?
Yes, I agree. That's why making it a girl is so hilarious. As to why you're so offended that I find it hilarious, I honestly don't know what to tell you. It's funny for the same reason I'll refer to a hypothetical serial killer as "him" and follow by saying "or her, of course" to females as if I'm pandering. The joke is that they weren't offended to be excluded from being serial killers.
And I'm not offended. I just have zero idea what your issue is. I never gave it any second thought what gender the person is. I don't care and I wonder what you're reading into it.
At least in my mind when I encounter something oddly said/written my mind starts suggesting contexts and I can clearly "see" myself going blind by doing me like things.
It's a very well worded warning, that spread because it's effective. The official warning saying that you must take precautions even if you don't see anything wrong just doesn't work well.
https://www.nanog.org/news-stories/nanog-tv/top-talks/tutori...
(slides 79-84)
I'd refuse to buy this thing unless there was some national security reason for doing so, and then there would have to be interlocks on the room to de-energize it when anyone entered.
For more context, an SFP+ 10G LR 10km module is Class 1 (completely harmless during normal use).
Same with a 100G LR4 type module.
The ZR type modules that run 100+km are also Class 1.
Pretty much any optical module you plug into a router or a switch is Class 1.
Where you should definitely be cautious is:
- Around optical amplifiers, where things can get into Class 2 and 3.
- DWDM setups where each module may be a Class 1, but the sum of their light adds up into something harmful.
The chart you linked suggests that it'll start fires if you accidentally break the fibre.
Having said that, it is probably highly divergent out of the fiber (depends on type). There's no risk beyond a few cm. Don't stick the fiber it up against your eye though.
To answer someone below its unlikely you could get burned except right at the fiber tip. You can stick your hand in a 1.5W beam as long as it isn't tightly focused.
The main risk is you couldn’t see it so no blink reflex to help from even specular reflections.
Regardless, it would be reckless to expose this to people without eye protection.
Igniting something is actually quite different from cutting or engraving. Lasers are often so good at cutting because they don't deliver enough energy to set things on fire, but enough inatantaneous intensity to rip molecules apart (have a look at comparisons between femtosecond and nanosecond laser cutting for example).
It was one of these: https://www.ipgphotonics.com/en/products/lasers/low-power-cw...
Those of us in the styropyro discord have found that to almost never be the case. WEAR EYE PROTECTION AT ALL TIMES.
That's how fiber LASER markers work. I'm the operator of them where I work (I do everything outside of SMT - x-rays, LASER marking, high-voltage testing, etc.) Every LASER coming out of that fiber hits focal point about 2 feet past the fiber, where it begins to diverge.
Do not trust a LASER coming out of a fiber to be unfocused or not have enough power density to blind you. Period.
For single and multimode fibers if it has a smaller focal spot some distance the fiber than at its tip you are talking about an assembly that includes the fiber plus an optic.
This is unambiguously true for single mode fibers. Multi mode one will diverge less
I could see there being some exception for a strange fiber which has a multi-emitter output, was nanostructured, tapered, etc..
A properly-shaped and polished fiber tip is already the optic. That's literally how it's fed into the galvo in a fiber-marking LASER. I'm also responsible for the maintenance on all equipment in the facility so I've had those machines apart more than once.
And no, this won't burn your eyes out. Despite what the clipboard warriors claim, a laser that's designed to couple to fiber will not magically focus itself at the exact distance where your eyes are located. Instead the beam will diverge as if the 1mW laser was a 1mW LED.
I learned the other day that this is actually a thing one can buy. Direct bury hybrid fiber copper, up to looked like 2 OS2 strands and 2 12awg copper conductors. It's fantastically expensive but might be worth it for certain applications, like cameras that are beyond PoE distance limits and also don't have power available.
Wire size is calculated off the 75C column of the ampacity table (NEC 310.16) so #12 wire is only good for 25A.
The reason being, there are almost no circuit breakers rated for 90C, the terminals/lugs are only rated for 75C in nearly all cases.
Forum thread w discussion: https://forums.mikeholt.com/threads/90-degree-or-75-degree.2...
I don’t think anyone needs shared fiber and 12ga cable in a home setting anyway.
The NEC also defers to UL and similar bodies for installations being cleared so the complexities go beyond the basic NEC guidance, especially for the exotic stuff out there.
You also need equipment lugs/terminal blocks/wire nuts rated for 90C.
I’m not saying 90C rated parts don’t exist, it’s just uncommon enough that you select wire based on the 75C column by default, even in a commercial setting.
Right now you can buy 50m USB3 cables made of 'Active Optical Cable' which is a fiber data link with two copper wires for power.
Options start at ~$100 for 50m https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004105594973.html and prices go up to https://www.lindy.co.uk/cables-adapters-c1/usb-c449/50m-hybr... - not cheap, but considering how few they probably sell and that you're getting a special custom type of cable, kinda affordable.
I can't quite explain it, but... having not known of the existence of such cables, and despite the fact that it's good I don't have a use for one since they're not exactly cheap, there's something about them that makes me want to buy one.
I've really no idea why, but I even spent a few minutes wondering if there's anything I've never done due to not having a cable like that, but didn't think of anything.
(And it's not like I'm a cable collector or enthusiast or anything like that, generally!)
Any ideas of reputable brands for optical display port (and miniDP) cables?
Did a quick search and the first version was £80 for 10m / £100 for 20m on Amazon from one of those shitty, random name Chinese "companies" (in this case called "ATZEBE), which wouldn't surprise me if it was actually just the cheapest DP cable of the right length they could find rather than the real deal. (Not that I'd trust buying any cable on Amazon, even one they claim is sold directly by a company like Apple, considering Amazon's co-mingling system leads to any time they claim "sold by x company" has for years actually meant "one or more of the stock we have for this item is sold by the company that its claiming to be made by, good luck hoping you get one of the legit ones".)
And thinking about the two options that user michaelt linked in the comment I replied to just above you:
> "Options start at ~$100 for 50m https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004105594973.html and prices go up to [£450 / $570 USD for 50m at:] https://www.lindy.co.uk/cables-adapters-c1/usb-c449/50m-hybr...
To what extent is the expensive one the equivalent of an audiophile getting a placebo effect from using overpriced audio cables that make no difference in a blind test, vs. it being the price needed for a good quality 50m optical/hybrid USB cable while the cheap one linked on AliExpress might either perform worse, last less long, or be an outright scam like those fake USB storage sticks that are hacked to tell the OS that they have more capacity than they actually do?
Also compare to data center hardware. A 10m 10gbps active optical cable is only $31 retail: https://www.fs.com/products/30895.html
Normally you'd buy optics and fiber (which is cheaper than copper ethernet cables of the same length) separately for data center use and in larger volume, but my point is that there's no expensive tech involved in these cables.
Having now done retrofit Ethernet install in a 75 year old house, if I ever build a new house it's going to have low voltage conduit from attic or basement to every interior wall and one or more big conduits from attic to a single home run location, itself with a dedicated 20A circuit.
Though I do know there's a company out there that makes manufactured 2x6 stud (tstuds is one name) that's basically 2 3x2's with diagonal pins between them. Quieter, less thermal transfer, and cheaper to make high R outside walls since the cost scales faster with length than width. Snaking a new cable through an interior walls made of that stuff would just require your typical fiberglass pole, with little to no drilling.
That’s not efficient in my book.
A typical LED is 40% efficient and a typical solar panel is ~20% efficient. A typical Qi charger is ~50% efficient. I stopped using cables for portable devices a few years ago and use magsafe instead which is supposedly has 75% efficiency due to perfect alignment of the coils, but that's still nowhere close to the ~100% you get from copper cables.
If you're running a whole cabinet of these then it's not the greatest.
Damn, I thought it was just a copper pair going along the fibers. I hope they provide some thick safety glasses with that.
I don't know if it'd come out as laser light, but 600 mW puts it into class 4 (eyes are damaged at a few 100m distance):
https://www.lasersafetyfacts.com/resources/FAA---visible-las...