Consulting beyond the standard
For some products, the classification and safety analysis can be very simple: a laser pointer featuring continuous wave emission that has the power of less than 1 mW is assigned to laser Class 2 (with due consideration of reasonably foreseeable single fault conditions) and is regarded as ”safe“ (for non-international exposure). However, the safety assessment or classification of more complex laser products, LEDs and lamps can be very involved: (more in "Complex Sources")
The laser safety standard IEC 60825-1 is a very complex standard, which comes from the complex nature of biological exposure limits extending over a huge range of parameters in terms of wavelength and pulse duration. For correct application and interpretation, not only the knowledge of technical standard, but also of the background of the "biological" limits is necessary. The internationally active consultant of our group, Karl Schulmeister, PhD, is not only technical secretary of the IEC team which is responsible for the IEC 60825-1 (and project leader for the on-going revision of IEC 60825-1), but he is also active in bioeffects committees and is actively conducting bioeffects research. (>> Track Record/Resume of Karl Schulmeister)
Let your safety-calculations be carried out, or reviewed, by our experts.
This way you are able to save time and you can rely on the accuracy of the analysis, carried out by one of the key authors of IEC 60825-1. Additionally, for particularly complex sources our simulations-software – an internationally unique tool for the evaluation of the risk of thermal eye-damage - is at our disposal.
Consulting beyond the standard!
Conformity and compliance with the standard is important - but in some cases compliance with IEC 60825-1 is not sufficient for a product to comply with the legal requirements to be considered as "safe". Our exclusive know-how enables us to also evaluate products or radiation patterns, for which no technical standards are available, or for which the standards are unsuitable or do not cover a very specific case.
Our know-how is at your disposal:
- We know the limits of applicability of the standards.
- We know the limits of applicability concerning biological exposure limits (special exposure scenarios).
- We are able to assess the risk of eye- or skin damage (beyond the limits laid down by the standards).
- We have dealt with the topic of general legal requirements, which even led to the publication of a handbook about the legal bases of product-safety (in German, free of charge in the download area).
Examples of the consulting-services of our internationally acknowledged experts:
- Carrying out of safety calculations (comparison of laser emission with limits; case studies)
- Reviewing your safety calculations
- In-house seminars and workshops
- Risk analyses on the basis of expected exposure in comparison with the exposure limits, additional to classification (if the classification according to standard IEC 60825-1 or IEC 62471 is unsuitable)
- Risk analysis on the basis of actual threshold damage values of the eyes and the skin (independent of exposure limits, which can be over-restrictive); user information, fault analyses and scanning safeguards, this is also relevant for compliance with IEC 60825-1
- Assistance with the formulation of user instructions