My ophthalmologist told me that I’m developing cataracts, and I’d
certainly like to avoid making them worse. I believe Alma suggested
that infra red causes or aggravates cataracts. I had thought ultra
violet light was the problem. Is it IR only, UV only, or both
perhaps?
I’ve been using Auralens’ Aura-92 glasses while viewing enameling
through a kiln window, and when I used to use an oxy-acetylene
torch. James’ statement regarding didymium lenses caused me to check
the Auralens website:
which confirms his assertion that didymium offers no IR protection.
Regarding their Aura-92 lenses, the spectral transmission charts on
their website show that Aura-92 is a lot better than didymium, and
they claim ‘very good’ UV protection and ‘much improved’ IR
protection, but is it good enough?
Their Aura-99 lenses show vastly better UV and IR filtering, but
they block more visible light as well. Should people who do enameling
or use acetylene torches, and who are concerned about developing
cataracts use Aura-99 lenses? Something else?
Clarification of this might be helpful to a lot of Orchideans.
Thanks.
James. Thanks for the I appreciate it. I don't want
to take any chances with my eyes. Do you have any suggestions as to
what I should be using?
AGW-300 from Auralens Aura Visual Concepts, Inc.. Store closed is a good
filter for regular soldering unfortunately they are not
inexpensive. For a less expensive option use a shade 3 welding
filter, the drawback is it cut out a lot of the visible spectrum. For
platinum welding or soldering you need shade 5 welding filters.
I very recently started using a Smith[tm] oxy/acetylene Little
Torch’ for soldering silver, gold and some small scale casting.
I was told I don’t need any uv/ir protection for using this torch
during either soldering or casting. Is this true?
If this is not true. Does anybody know what the lightest shade of
eye protection you could wear when performing these operations with
the Little Torch’? Especially soldering.
I’ve tried to use the dark ones before and most of the time they’re
to dark to see what is going on with tiny joints. So I mostly use my
acetylene/air torch instead.
AGW-300 from Auralens http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/116 is a good
filter for regular soldering unfortunately they are not
inexpensive. For a less expensive option use a shade 3 welding
filter, the drawback is it cut out a lot of the visible spectrum.
For platinum welding or soldering you need shade 5 welding
filters.
I am using Propane/oxygen and soldering and melting silver and gold.
Is this lens necessary for this? My eyes are extremely important to
me as my main business is cutting gems and I am blessed with
extremely good eye sight which makes cutting a lot easier and faster.
However I see that this same company offers a large variety of
different lenses with different properties and wonder which is best
for what I do and which is overkill. Being able to accurately
discern the color of the metal is also very important as I am fusing
Argentium and the color and appearance of when it is fusing is could
be hard to see with a shade or something to the glasses.
I see the ones James recommended are $300 or more a pair, the agw250
for example are about $100 per pair.
Are they (or a different model) plenty good for what I am doing?
A simple pair of shade 3 welding lenses will do just fine for eye
protection for your applications and are relatively inexpensive. The
drawback is that they are fairly dark green lenses (they knock out
about 70% of the visible light) and make reading color of hot metal
quite difficult which is why most jewelers don’t wear them. That
doesn’t mean we don’t need the protection thoug.
The advantage of the Aura ARU-300 lenses is that they do not filter
out as much of the visible light. The various lenses on the Aura
site have different uses, most of which are for hot glass work where
the light intensity is greater. Several of their lenses are good for
metal work as well but as you noted quite expensive.
The basic safety standard for torch brazing and soldering (which is
what typical jewelry torch work is) is a shade 3-4 lens. If you are
working with something like platinum, you need more in the 5-6 range.
Because I live in a hot sunny place, I habitually buy my prescription
glasses with IR and UV rated lenses, anyway, so face shield I use
when I’m doing a lot of torch work pretty much soaks the rest.
Like anything like this, it’s easy to overthink this stuff. Common
sense safety, and knowing what your existing safety gear already does
takes some of the “squick” factor out of this kind of thing…