Laser Surgery on Smashed Finger

[Joseph Shawa]

Completely crushed a finger in the weight room and the pressure building was so unbearable that keeping it in a cup of ice water was the only pain reliever.....that is until I realized, I have a "Laser!"

100% power 3 x 1ms pulses later- Ahhhhh

[Adam Herman]

HA. i have used a 1/16 drill bit to relive the pressure, spun by hand of course.

[Joseph Shawa]

I usually use a hot needle in needle nose vice grips. Melts right through. But like I said, now I've got a laser.

[Kim Vellore]

Hope you had the exhaust on max.

[Joseph Shawa]

Nope- nothing like the smell of burnt hair in the morning.

[Kev Williams]

I tried to shave with mine once-

I was engraving Cermark, 4 lines of text, down the length of a non-rotating SS tube- Lines 2 and 3 I did first, then raised the table to focus lines 1 and 4, which were lower down the tube radius.

I engrave with my door open-

I'm standing there watching it engrave line 1, then it starts line 4. About halfway thru all of a sudden I get hit in the face with a blast of heat, and immediately smell hair burning-- my mustache almost caught on fire! Or it did briefly, it was pretty crispy in spots...

And somewhere on a computer around here, I have a picture of a fly- one of those big suckers with the glossy green paint job. He's walking around inside the laser cabinet while it's cutting out name badges. He and the beam finally met, and the laser cleanly sliced one of his wings in half.

These are two reasons I don't fancy much using my laser for surgical purposes!


Found it!
fly.jpg

[John Blazy]

So yesterday I'm cutting a thick pc of thermoformed acrylic - 1/4", but curved for a bracelet faceplate, so overall is about 5/8" thick and focus of laser is averaging between high an low spots, and running at 2mm / second due to the thickness.

So it catches fire a little at that slow speed, and I don't want to ruin the acrylic, so my instinctive reaction was to reach my head in and blow, when I felt an immediate burn on my nose. This is what it looks like today.

Damn too close to my eye.
win_20161027_17_02_06_pro.jpg

[Bill George]

So if the neighbor girls want say a nose piercing or perhaps even an ear. No bleeding and while they wait.
But I would learn to close the lid when Lasering.

[Joseph Shawa]

Ouch! Advanced plastic surgery! LOL
I've got my finger a couple of times doing similar. I leave my lid open as well except when smoke happens.

[Joseph Shawa]

Great youtube video on killing mosquitoes with a laser tracker and IR laser. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKm8FolQ7jw

[Brett Luna]

And somewhere on a computer around here, I have a picture of a fly- one of those big suckers with the glossy green paint job. He's walking around inside the laser cabinet while it's cutting out name badges. He and the beam finally met, and the laser cleanly sliced one of his wings in half.

I'm not a laser engraver but that reminds me of my early USAF days, maintaining avionic sensor systems that included laser target designators. I worked one system over in Korea in 1981 called Pave Spike. Normally, the beams expands to illuminate a target but on the test bench, with the optical dome removed, it was focused at 8 feet. Every once in a while during the summer when guys got bored, they would put honey or sugar water on the wall to attract flies and make a video game of it, using a controller to line them up in the cross hairs on the monitor.