# How many lumens = dangerous?



## MemphisMagD (Sep 4, 2009)

Having seen the video of what some of the hotwires can do I was wondering. How bright can you get and still have a useable light instead of a battery powered flame thrower?


----------



## Monkiee (Sep 4, 2009)

If you have an infinite amount of energy, you could probably make a bulb that gives off 10000 lumens. But good luck finding the power to do it.

What are you going to use the light for? Navigation in darkness takes only 1 lumen. Reading a map takes 5 lumens. Searching the woods takes about 45 and searching for things at long distances requires as many lumens as possible.


----------



## Bullzeyebill (Sep 4, 2009)

MemphisMagD said:


> Having seen the video of what some of the hotwires can do I was wondering. How bright can you get and still have a useable light instead of a battery powered flame thrower?



My USL is usuable. It can fry eggs, start a camp fire, kill mosquitos, and lite up a path, actually lite it up. 

Bill


----------



## lolzertank (Sep 4, 2009)

For Mag hotwires, a ROP high is probably pushing it. IIRC, someone here almost set a $100 bill on fire with a 5761.


----------



## Juggernaut (Sep 5, 2009)

Monkiee said:


> If you have an infinite amount of energy, you could probably make a bulb that gives off 10000 lumens. But good luck finding the power to do it.


 
My top light makes 29,000 Lumens, and I think the world record is about 38,000+ lumens from that 400 watt HID Thor light.


----------



## curlyfry562 (Sep 5, 2009)

16,000 lumens hurts like a 8*$^& out of the front of my Light force Blitz w/ 400 watt bulb, but I am not blind, yet.


----------



## AusKipper (Sep 5, 2009)

223.7 Lumins, anything over that is pretty dangerous.. (Once the UK government figures out how good LED torches have gotten these days, i'm sure thats about the figure they will ban it at  )


----------



## csshih (Sep 5, 2009)

dangerous? depends on spot intensity...

what about the 60" WWII carbon arc?


----------



## roguesw (Sep 5, 2009)

Maybe not just lumens but battery capacity
Some of the hotwires and now LEDs are using big big batterys in series.
One short and pooffff.

I would be more worried with high power incans about leaving them around with loaded batteries. Someone could come and turn it on and leave it, nice way to set the house on fire.


----------



## JeffInChi (Sep 5, 2009)

*How many lumens = dangerous?




:naughty: is there such a thing?

*


----------



## alpg88 (Sep 5, 2009)

my next project, carbon arc flashlight, lol.


----------



## strinq (Sep 5, 2009)

Can't help it but...

0 lumens = dangerous


----------



## Juggernaut (Sep 5, 2009)

strinq said:


> Can't help it but...
> 
> 0 lumens = dangerous


 
:laughing: That's very true!


----------



## Chrontius (Sep 5, 2009)

It's not lumens that's dangerous, it's watts per square meter, multiplied by the percent absorbance of the object it's pointed at. That determines how hot the object gets.

Example: a three watt green laser doesn't put out many _lumens_, but it can start fires. I almost bought one on Ebay for that reason.


----------



## kelmo (Sep 5, 2009)

strinq said:


> Can't help it but...
> 
> 0 lumens = dangerous



I was just thinking the same thing!!!


----------



## alpg88 (Sep 6, 2009)

i wonder how many lm sun produces, if i'm looking at it from a distance that moon is away from earth, assuming i don't go up in flames.


----------



## Illum (Sep 6, 2009)

it depends on what you mean by lumens, our the front lumens? recieving end lumens after losses?

Those with film cameras know, if your shooting pictures near the sun, step up the F stops to something tiny...like 22-32 [if you can, 16 is okay] and set the shutter speed higher than ~1/125 sec. Because if you set it at F5.6, at 1/30 sec and whack the the film by making an exposure directly at the sun you _will_ burn a hole on the cellulose and then some :green:

Say if your eye is fully dilated, and exposed by a light in a neglectable distance and in an environment that cannot readily absorb light in a time frame of a few seconds. I believe even at 30 lumens it would cause considerable physical optic nerve damage

now, if your standing on the home side goal post of your school's football field, wearing a pair of sunglasses suited to watch a solar eclipse. There's a high dew point that night so there's light fog near the surface, BVH just happened to set up his AN/VSS-1 on the base of the guest side goal post and just decided to see if he can lightup the homeside goal post 
You might not be able to see a thing, but there wouldn't be much damage to worry about other than not losing your grip until your assistent grabs the ladder for you to come down.

a lethal dose has to consider several aspects...


Light source: what wavelengths at what intensity
Transmission distance
Transmission environment
Duration of exposure
How sensitive is your guinea pig :devil:


----------



## socom1970 (Sep 7, 2009)

I can melt plastic bags with my FM 12P/2x18650's/P91...:huh:


----------



## Gunner12 (Sep 8, 2009)

Chrontius said:


> It's not lumens that's dangerous, it's watts per square meter, multiplied by the percent absorbance of the object it's pointed at. That determines how hot the object gets.
> 
> Example: a three watt green laser doesn't put out many _lumens_, but it can start fires. I almost bought one on Ebay for that reason.



Exactly

That's why staring at a 5mw laser(only a couple of lumen) is much much more damaging then if you stare at a LED producing 1w of light(over 200 lumen).


----------



## jahxman (Sep 9, 2009)

alpg88 said:


> i wonder how many lm sun produces, if i'm looking at it from a distance that moon is away from earth, assuming i don't go up in flames.


 
If you are that close to the sun you died a ways back already getting there. Now you are just a crispy fellow. Even in a space ship with tens of meters of lead shielding to stop the radiation, your craft would be unable to shed the heat fast enough to prevent you from being poached in your space suit.

Think about this - you can easily feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, similar the the warmth you can feel from a powerful flashlight at close range. Now consider that the sun is 92 MILLION miles away, and being filtered through several miles of atmosphere. 

I don't have the mad math skill to calculate it, but if you expressed the Sun's output in lumens it would be some meaningless exponent anyhow.

Edit: someone on Wikipedia has the mad math skills: ~3.75×10^28 lm (link)
That's approx 37,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lumens


----------



## Outdoors Fanatic (Sep 9, 2009)

lolzertank said:


> For Mag hotwires, a ROP high is probably pushing it. IIRC, someone here almost set a $100 bill on fire with a 5761.


The ROP High is pretty mild compared to lots of Mag mods out there...


----------



## MemphisMagD (Sep 9, 2009)

Chrontius said:


> It's not lumens that's dangerous, it's watts per square meter, multiplied by the percent absorbance of the object it's pointed at. That determines how hot the object gets.
> 
> Example: a three watt green laser doesn't put out many _lumens_, but it can start fires. I almost bought one on Ebay for that reason.



This is along the lines of what I was getting at in the OP. But from a practical standpoint when do the hotwires start getting dangerous? Is anything above a ROP H to risky for any thing like real world use? I'm not concerned with runtime and battery safety for this discussion, but simply how many out the front lumens start to make our toys fire starters. Where do I have to worry about settings my sleeves on fire?


----------



## Gunner12 (Sep 9, 2009)

MemphisMagD said:


> This is along the lines of what I was getting at in the OP. But from a practical standpoint when do the hotwires start getting dangerous? Is anything above a ROP H to risky for any thing like real world use? I'm not concerned with runtime and battery safety for this discussion, but simply how many out the front lumens start to make our toys fire starters. Where do I have to worry about settings my sleeves on fire?



Well that depends a lot on the thing that is absorbing the light. For example a white sheet of card stock is harder to light on fire then a black piece of newspaper. Also how much infrared is being produced is important too. Incans produce a lot of infrared which helps a lot in starting fires. A powerful infrared light can produce very little lumen and still create a fire. Fire itself is a good example of that. Fire is not very efficient at producing light, but it can set things on fire because of the amount of infrared light/heat that is being produced and not because of how much visible light is being produced.


----------



## Solscud007 (Sep 10, 2009)

I know that zombie hordes turn away from my SF M6 MN21 blasting 500 lumens. 

when i say zombies Im talking about airsoft live action role play simulation of zombie survival.


----------



## mudman cj (Sep 10, 2009)

Danger quotient = [(candlepower)*(battery pack current draw)*(# of unprotected Li-ion batteries + 1)^1.5*(# of protected Li-ion batteries + 1)*(4 for carbon arc, 2 for incandescent or HID, 1 for LED)]/[(distance from light)^2*(age of user)]


----------



## Illum (Sep 10, 2009)

Solscud007 said:


> I know that zombie hordes turn away from my SF M6 MN21 blasting 500 lumens.
> 
> when i say zombies Im talking about airsoft live action role play simulation of zombie survival.



given your application I have no doubt anything higher than a M6 equipped with an 1185 will sting like phosphor:nana:


----------



## MemphisMagD (Sep 10, 2009)

mudman cj said:


> Danger quotient = [(candlepower)*(battery pack current draw)*(# of unprotected Li-ion batteries + 3)*(# of protected Li-ion batteries + 1)*(4 for carbon arc, 2 for incandescent or HID, 1 for LED)]/[(distance from light)*(age of user)]



That it! The exact answer I was looking for, lol. How about we say human skin (caucasian) as the target matter and we say a 2 second moment of carelessness. Where does danger start? Is a Mag623 gonna be painfull? What will?


----------

