Laser Glasses

Laser Glasses or more specifically Laser Enhancement Glasses

Many laser levels, when you purchase them, come with red coloured glasses, for red beam lasers and green coloured glasses for green beam lasers.

I’ve often overheard people referring to them as laser safety glasses, but, this is not true.  Laser safety glasses are something completely different with a mirrored type finish.  They are often used around extremely high powered lasers such as in medical situations, laser cutting and university laboratories.  Laser produced by construction lasers are extremely low power and so do not pose a medical danger.  Construction lasers are rated or classified as either a class 2 or class 3r (3a) which have an output of <1mW and <5mW respectively.  At these power levels the eyes natural blink response prevents damage,  if however, you force yourself to stare at the beam then you may cause some temporary or other damage.  DO NOT STARE at the beam.

So these red or green glasses are not for safety reasons so what are they there for?  The heading of this post gives this away, they are laser enhancement glasses, they simply make the laser more visible than when not wearing the glasses.

Sometimes when using a visible line or dot laser in brighter conditions inside or over longer distances it may be hard to visibly see the line or dot.  By wearing the glasses the laser line or dot stands out that little bit more.

If you look closely in the image below you may just see a pale red laser line on the grey coloured wall.  Look now at the red laser glasses, to the left,  you can quite clearly see the same red laser line.  Naturally if you are using a green beam laser then you will get a similar result when using green laser glasses.

Other ways of making a laser brighter is to move the laser level closer to the wall.  Reducing ambient light or if using a rotating laser alter the rotation speed or select scan line mode if available.

Finally if you still cant see the laser then you may need to use an electronic laser receiver if available.  See post HERE .