The noob scanner project (aka The Noober) diary

[Occularis]

Love the workbench with all the instruments inlet into the trunking.

Yep, So do I. Pity its not in my home

Good grief! You've got a lot of bits and pieces there... Any luck actually getting the rotor to move yet?

Nah, the rotors are still not moving, but that's as it should be, since I havnt been working on those today. Had a full day of theory on integrated circuits and microcontrollers today. -Tomorrow I'm gonna go back to work on the galvos. I managed to mount the last two 405nm LD's today, one of which was dead , but at least I've got 2 nicely working ones and a bright 650nm.
Gonna try to remember to bring a better camera than my phone

[FourDee]

The coils in your last picture will probably not work.
Or you will have to orient them differently ...

[Occularis]

The coils in your last picture will probably not work.
Or you will have to orient them differently ...

Yep, gonna experiment with a few different configurations. I can get 50 more coils of the same type, would be nice to have some use for them

[shrad]

yay, I now know where to get a tesla coil secondary for the flat eric I wanna build http://www.extremeelectronics.co.uk/coils/eric/

really good idea you had with these coils, I'll have a look too at the way they could be used with neodymium magnets (I have 7mm dia * 0.6mm width magnets, I think I'll drill the middle of my axes to put one inside and get good stability)

the reverse side would be, I think, wire diameter, as you really want more more turns and a smaller diameter (also a good thermal contact with the outer world, like thermal-epoxied to an Al plate with fins)

[Occularis]

Day 5 progress:



Those coils (harvested four) are taken from 110V transformers. I had to cut the steel cores, force them from the coil-capsles, and then split the primary and secondary coils from eachother using a urethane club and a chisel . Somewhat rough surgery, but it worked.
Going to refit the ball bearings after I have completed the covers for both galvos and cut down the length of the axle.

"Accidentally" torched the rubber handle on a pair of pliers with one of the 405nm lasers, much to my teachers' delight
I did it to demonstrate that what I'm doing is NOT a toy, it actually started to melt the handle and develop smoke in less than 0,5 sec with proper focusing.

[Occularis]

Day 6:

Not much happening. For some reason I cant get along with the coils.
Slaughtered 2 scanners (unfortunately the kind that scans pictures...) for mirrors and optics. Also dismantled 2 stepper motors to investigate possible useage of the coil-arrays in those.
Epoxied the magnets to the rotors.
Tested the 405nm LD's @ 160mA and played around with a reflector, burned my hand by accident as I lost track of one of the reflections, lol
Totally forgot that I brought the camera today. Pics will come tomorrow.

[Occularis]

Day 7:

Made alu mounts for the Aixiz modules and some 45degree angle mirrormountings. Tested the stepper motor coil-thingies with my rotor, which seems to work pretty well with only 5-10V input, a lot better than the other coils.
Got news from one of the teachers that I'd be allowed to strip parts from an old Pick 'n' place-robot that the school is going to discard (!!!) With some luck, I've struck gold here!

Got to work and got me 3x amps (at least they look like stepper amps...?), 2x something marked "turbo", and a transformer bridge, all in nice alu modules. The rest of the interesting stuff had already been claimed by the school. If anyone has ever seen these before and has a clue about them, please tell me . Didnt have time to look for specs, that'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I also stopped by a local computer dealership and picked up some discarded stuff; a dvd-rw, a cd-rw and a cd-r. Free LD's = yum.

[Occularis]

No work done today, only theory on microcontrollers and transistors.
Recalculated some values due to the addition of 650/660 LD's, at the moment it's at:

650/660nm (Red) LPC-815 250mW
650/660nm (Red) unknown 250mW
650/660nm (Red) unknown 150mW
405nm (Violet) PHR-803T HD 160mW
405nm (Violet) PHR-803T HD 160mW

-Almost 1W . It's going to be fun aligning all of those beams, should make a nice deep red, right?

Going to play some Battlefield Heroes now, and later fire up multisim to make a driverboard for the LD's. If anyone is interested I'll post the schematics when I'm done.

Edit: Blah. Dealextreme order status as of 03/05/2010: Processing - Awaiting stock. I want my Cmedia card!

[shrad]

don't expect more than 100mW from the PHR803T

[Occularis]

don't expect more than 100mW from the PHR803T

Mmkay. It's just calculated based on voltage and amps since I dont have anything to measure laser wattage with . Both of them makes a really bright burning spot at 160mA, that's good enough for me for my first build. I suspect the reds to be quite dominant anyways, hehe.