So, I got stupid. “Why isn’t the framing working? Why do I only see two lasers?” These are questions that should’ve bothered me. The smoke and smell, at least, bothered me enough to hit the e-stop/power button. Lesson learned.
But I like to have layered redundancies. On my CO2 I make sure I have multiple levels of safety just in case I get complacent, so I wanted a real redundant indicator that the lens cap was still in place. Well, I was patching the hole in the cap with masking tape (which should be “laser safe” if it burns away) anyway, so I made a flag out of masking tape and hung it from the lens cap. Now even if I don’t notice the lens cap, or that it’s not framing correctly, I should notice four inches of masking tape getting in the way of my workspace.
So hanging something from the lens cap is a pretty solid idea I’d like to share. If I had to do it all over again, I’d get something designed for camera lenses and attach it to the machine so it’s always ready but out of the way, but anything that catches attention is an easy way to make an “oops” much less likely.
Well, I got a good laugh and feel better about it. Glad I wasn’t the first one to have this idea, but also happy I found a working solution in the moment.
There’s the apocryphal story of a [nationality] rocket launch failing because a poorly trained [nationality] tech methodically cut all the Remove before launch tags off their locking pins …
