Advice on a chinese POS

[LEDpaint]

Weiland,

Thanks for the great info and pic! Every pic I can see helps me understand the build a little bit better.

Originally, I planned on getting an ebay projector for my lighting business and renting the crud out of it until I had the cash to buy a really nice projector. I already knew that whatever I got, it would not be anywhere near what they advertised in terms of quality and power. I also looked at X-Laser's Skywriter, which, for the money, seems pretty nice. In addition, the ease of getting a variance with the X-Laser was very attractive.

After getting lots of advice from the friendly and knowledgable members of the forum, I decided to build it. I ended up getting the internals from Marc's company CT Lasers and Edison's beautifully designed case. The parts arrive in about two weeks; hopefully I'm up to the task of cobbling this thing together.

Funny because my advice to others was always get the best you can afford, even if you have to wait. I guess I had to hear it from someone else for a change, but I'm glad I listened. I still don't think there's really anything wrong with going the ebay route for a nice little laser to play around with, but my needs (or maybe fantasies, desires, curiosity, ego, stupidity?) are a little more than what one of these things can satisfy.

[The_Doctor]

I thought that some of the cheaper complete show lasers had a Pangolin FB3 control system in them. If they do it could be worth having one secondhand (eBay) for the dichros, mirrors, the FB3 and maybe the case. And at least one of the lasers has a chance of being usable in something better. Hopefully. They're not that bad, are they? I'd have thought the main weakness was a disparity of parts resulting in a slightly shabby whole, but I bet a lot of the parts are decent.

[heroic]

The Neolaser projectors (made by Neo-Neon) actually have an FB3 in them. The colour versions have dichros but they are not very good quality ones, and in the smaller versions are not mounted on adjustable mounts. When I had to change the blue in ours it was positively nightmarish getting the damned thing adjusted.