By watching out of the corner of their eyes, I have seen construction workers turn welding electrodes into chicken shit on structural steel. Obviously the UV light doesn't notice that they are taking a sneaky look without any kind of dark glass.
So, spectacles with a fresnel lens basically do the same job, but the wearer can look straight ahead in comfort, knowing that he can look at anything without the laws of physics noticing.-- Ling, Jun 21 2016 How do you look out of their eyes, Ling? Are you looking out of mine? Did you see where I left my fanny pack? The one with the squirrels. Pictures of squirrels, not containing squirrels.-- bungston, Jun 21 2016 <Roy Batty>
"Bungston, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes ! "
</Roy Batty>-- 8th of 7, Jun 21 2016 Attenuation is what most welding goggles do. But ideally they should do dynamic range compression, cutting out the brightest light but letting ordinary light through. So pretending that LCD autodimming masks don't exist, wouldn't it be great to use some material that responded in a non-linear way??
Custard welding goggles.-- mitxela, Jun 21 2016 Actually, you only need to block the UV for safety - and plenty of materials will block UV completely whilst being completely transparent to visible light.
The other function of welder's goggles is to prevent dazzle, so you can see immediately after welding instead of waiting for three minutes for your eyes to adjust.
At a pinch, it's reasonable and safe to wear UV- protective (but otherwise normal) glasses, and squint hard to eliminate most of the dazzle.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 21 2016 Well it depends. I mostly do acetylene which is pretty tame and sunglasses are probably sufficient, mig and tig are middle ground but with arc it's so bright that even with the correct safety gear it hurts my eyes if I don't squint. Also any exposed skin gets burnt really quickly, if sleeves/gloves aren't lined up you get burns all around your wrist.
I wonder how expensive it would be to make a welding mask out of NLO crystal.-- mitxela, Jun 21 2016 //Also any exposed skin gets burnt really quickly//
Yes - good point; I was thinking about eyes only.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 21 2016 random, halfbakery