What is it?

Steampunk laser safety glasses with 1/8"(3.2mm) Polycarbonate lenses. The optical properties of the lens are better than any laser safety glasses I've seen(seriously, if you find any that block more light let me know and I'll add them here).

In addition the thick polycarbonate makes them the best regular safety glasses I own as well. All while looking fly as heck 😎

Why did you make it?

I bought a 5W UV laser for a cardboard laser cutter. I was planning on using it without a shielding box, so good laser safety glasses were mandatory. The ones that came with the laser were basically for halloween.

I looked into high quality laser safety glasses and couldn't find anything good under $300. In addition, I was planning on using these for general grinding and Dremel use as well, so I wanted something made of polycarbonate rather than acrylic(acrylic is very brittle and shatters with sharp edges; polycarbonate is used to make bulletproof glass). So I decided to make my own!

What makes it special?

Safety glasses are rated using a system called Optical Density(OD). OD is the log10 inverse of Transmission. Which means OD0 lets in 100% of the light, OD1 lets in 10%, OD2 lets in 1% and so on. These glasses have OD10+ for UV lasers i.e. the let <0.00000001% of the 395nm UV laser light. For CO2 lasers it's OD8+ i.e. <0.000001% of the 10600nm far infrared light the laser emits.

These specs are better than most $500 laser safety glasses by a factor of 100. And, it's not like these are welding glasses that block most of the light. They're closer to night riding glasses and let in about 50% of visible light.

You can read more about the lens material in the datasheet here

Disclaimer

These glasses are not a substitute for good laser safety practices. Use caution when working with lasers.