Laser dimbulb 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
This should go without saying, but some people absolutely, positively should not be allowed to work with giant lasers.
There's a lot of things you can find in machine shops that can be hazardous to your health, but industrial lasers are among the scariest. While they may not be quite as dangerous as the lasers in science fiction, anything that can burn a hole through inch thick steel in a few seconds can really do a lot of damage if it should hit you. Unlike a cutting tool or the flame of a welding torch, a laser beam can extend for hundreds of feet without its danger diminishing very much. And to top it off, most such beams are completely invisible, unlike what you see in the movies.
So, people usually take a lot of precautions around industrial lasers. Most machines that use them are set up so it's impossible to point the laser beam any way but downwards except while they're partially disassembled for maintenance or tuning.
With that background explained, here's an account I heard from one of my co-workers at a company that makes and sells laser cutting equipment. He had gone to a local factory to maintain one of our machines, and he noticed they had just installed another machine, built by one of our competitors. He also noticed that the machinist who came out to meet him had his entire left arm in bandages. After a while, the machinist explained how he had been injured.
When first installing a laser, one of the steps is to fire the laser at a plastic block, which is about 2" by 2" by 1". The laser will burn a hole most of the way through the block, and by examining the shape of the hole, you can get a good idea of how well the laser is working. Unlike the way it's pointed while running the machine, this is usually done with the laser beam going horizontal. The plastic block should always be set up on some kind of holding fixture, with a good and thick piece of material behind it. Sometimes the beam doesn't quite go where you want it, and so you need some way to be sure you're not going to end up with a stray laser beam flying through your shop.
Well, as it turns out, they couldn't find anything suitable to hold up the plastic block. So the guy installing this machine somehow managed to talk the machinist into holding up the block while they fired the laser at it. I don't know what they were thinking. Even if he managed to aim the beam straight, there's no way anyone could hold the block steady enough to get a hole that would tell you anything useful.
Well, they didn't aim the beam correctly, either. It missed the block entirely, and hit the machinist's hand instead. The result was some pretty severe burns, bad enough that a ring the machinist had on his finger melted.
You'd think people would be more careful with things like that. Submitted on 01/31/02
Submitted by:
Matt Cramer
Reference:
Personal Account
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