Beam shows without smoke

[woweee]

Hi

I'm a total newbie thinking of investing in a laser for my mobile disco.
I've have been very impressed by the laser shows on this forum and on youtube.
The problem I have is that all the venues I work in do not allow smoke machines.
However the venues are very dark and have high ceilings, will it be possible to achieve beam effects without smoke with a 5 watt, RGB, analogue laser ?

Also would a scanspeed of 20Kpps be sufficient or should I go for a higher spec ?

[gottaluvlasers]

Hi Woweee-

1) why dont you fill in your profile so we know where you're from. We are a friendly community here and and a little personal info adds to our community value.

2) Welcome!

To answer your questions-

To see beams in the air you need some sort of particulate in the air. smoke, haze, dust, water, snow, so on and so forth. if you already know that the venues you are interesting in performing in do not allow haze/fog its going to be tough.

Beam visibility needs raw, pure power. even 40 watt KTP systems can have visibility issues if the air does not have alot of scatterin effects in it. The visiibility also depends on the wavelength (color) being projected. Red is the hardest for our eyes to see, and therefore requires MUCH more power to be seen. Green is the easiest for our eyes to see and therefore does not require as much power to be visible. blue is in the middle.

1 Watt of red (650nm red) in a dark room with average particulates in the air (like in a house or basic room) would not be very impressively visible. Maybe not at all. 1 Watt of green in the same room would be very visible. Even with the lights on.

A 5 Watt RGB Laser with an average balance of say 3W/red, 1W/green and 1W/blue (or close to these ratios) would look "ok" in an area with no haze fog with slow moving beam type effects. Once you start getting to wider, faster more solid effects (like a liquid sky) the visibility will be very poor.

the botom line, fog and haze is a necessity when doing laser shows. The biggest, baddest laser system in the world can look like a laser pointer in a metal box if the air conditions are not cooperative.

20K scanning is on the lower end. 30K is a good starting point. 20K is sufficient for basic beam shows and simplistic graphics.

-Marc

[dzodzo]

The problem I have is that all the venues I work in do not allow smoke machines.

Would they by any chance allow hazers? I know smoke machines can be problem for fire alarms but hazers should produce smaller particles that are not setting off alarms. Investigate if you could use it because even a little haze adds a lot in terms of visibility. For smaller venues you'll be fine with lower powers. Largest i did was 1100+ people with 1,6W rgb and it was beyond fine (i tuned the power down to 2/3) - but that one has bright 637-640 nm 300mW red module so even the red is well visible.