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Thread: New to the Forum, advice on projector bulid

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2017
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    2

    Default New to the Forum, advice on projector bulid

    Hello,
    I am officially de-lurking and joining the forum.
    I am a moving light technician and manage the Tech. Department of a large entertainment lighting company.
    I maintain a fleet of automated lighting fixtures (moving heads) along with DMX consoles, dimmers and power distribution systems.
    I've have had a keen interest in entertainment lasers for a number of years, and have recently been working to modify a import laser projector that I acquired a few years ago, but was not satisfied with its build quality or performance.

    The projector I bought was relatively inexpensive, and as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. As this was my first foray, I decided to start with a inexpensive unit and work up from there. Better to learn and make mistakes with a cheep unit before investing the big bucks.
    The projector that I have, originally came with RGB, TTL modulated heads in it. I had requested analog modulation, but the unit arrived with TTL. This simply would not do.
    I now have a analog modulated RGB head from Opt Lasers, the Polish company, not the Chinese one.
    It is a nice unit, but the documentation is a bit sparse.
    http://optlasers.com/en/diode-fiber-rgb-modules/81-4w-mini-rgb-laser-module-with-75v-psu-5902693110491.htm

    It works, with analog control of the RGB colors, but it is not coming up to full brightness.
    The projector has a control card in it card in it that all the components are connected to. This includes, the ILDA ports, scanner amps, interlock/remote, DMX, and the laser drivers.
    Each of the laser control lines (R,G,B) has 2 connections, red and black.
    The Opt Laser driver has 4 control inputs, Black, red, blue, and green.
    I assumed that the black is ground and the colored lines are 0V to 5V TTL or Analog modulation inputs.
    I bused the black wires from the control card together into the black input of the driver and individually connected the
    RGB red wires from the control card to each line of the driver.
    With any of the colors at full, I meter 2.5V across the black and any of the three color lines from the output of the control card.
    This accounts for the limited brightness, it is outputting only 50% at 2.5V.
    According to the ILDA signal description the color intensity channels are +5V differential, and when referenced to ground are +2.5V and -2.5V. This leads me to believe that the black wires on the color outputs of the control card are in fact ground, thus the 2.5V between red and black for any of the 3 colors.
    The "control card" looks similar to this one (for sale on ebay) I do not know if the processor is the same.

    My question is this: How should I go about getting the full 5V differential signal to the lasers while still incorporating the safety features of interlock and remote disable? I am not concerned with the signal ruining through the control card in the projector. I do not need the on board programs or the DMX inputs. It would be cleaner to use it, and DMX might be nice, but I can live without it
    Will it work properly if connect the positive intensity pins #5,6,7 individually to RGB and buss together the negative intensity pins #18,19,20, and then route that negative line through the interlock and remote disable?
    Are there any precautions that I should take if connecting the pins of the ILDA input directly to the laser driver?
    Is there a device that is typically used for processing the color signals and interlocks in laser projectors that I should acquire and incorporate into this setup?

    For control I am using Beyond Advanced and a QM2000.net

    Any assistance would be appreciated.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2017
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    Default

    I have found the answers to my questions in William Benner's article, Making the Right Connections for Perfect Laser Images.

  3. #3
    Bradfo69's Avatar
    Bradfo69 is offline Pending BST Forum Purchases: $47,127,283.53
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    Default

    Congrats on de-lurking. We don't bite... honest. At least most of us don't anyway. I was going to refer you to that article when I had a chance but have been running non stop at work today. There is a great board made by a forum member DZ that helps with easy projector wiring you might want to look into as well. http://www.aldebaran-systems.com/BBv3.htm
    .
    If you are in Europe - or even if you're not, Rob Stanley (stanwax on the forum) also makes some nice projector wiring magic devices. http://shop.stanwaxlaser.co.uk/
    PM Sent...

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