Protective clothing for working with lasers

The wearing of personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect the skin against exposed laser radiation is required by law; however, there are currently neither standardised testing requirements nor certified PPE available. This raises the question of how end-users should select suitable PPE and where they can purchase it in order to comply with the regulations. Within the project, PPE from application areas similar to laser processing, such as welding protection, was used to protect the skin. The initiation of a testing standard for laser protective clothing represents the first step towards testing and deploying protective clothing in accordance with the standard. Passive and active laser protective gloves, as well as other laser protective clothing, were tested specifically for laser material processing and classified within the scope of the project.