Do you undersrand your laser goggles are qualified
High-power ultrafast pulsed lasers are used widely for biomedical applications and imaging, materials processing, industrial micromachining and more. But many laser-eyewear products are not tested with ultrafast lasers and may not be providing adequate protection for the technical workers who depend on them. The main reason for this situation lies in the typical test procedures and standard measurements widely followed by eyewear makers to set their product specifications. Those methods use low-power continuous-wave (CW) light sources. As a result, they do not capture many potential hazards of actual high-power , pulsed-laser working conditions. Moreover, end users only infrequently test how their eyewear performs in particular applications prior to deployment. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; Gaithersburg, MD and Boulder, CO) and Hood College (Frederick, MD) have published a study of 24 samples of protective filters used in eyewear from fiv