This weekend, I'll be mostly....

[norty303]

.... building projectors!

Managed to pack the missus and nipper off to visit friends in London for the weekend, so I can finally get around to building my new pair of RGB's!

During the week I stripped the old ones out, and rebuilt them back up into single colour green satellites (took 1 evening to do each) using a graded pair of CNI heads. This left me with a pile of laser parts ready to go into the new ones.

Got 2 new pairs of DT30's to go in the new ones, and new CNI greens (graded pair again, doing about 700mW each), plus the old 350mW Laserwave 640s, and a homebuild 445, which will be getting cranked from 700mW to 1W, and a new 5v supply each, tweaked up to 5.5 or 6v. (Chroma says the combo will look shit )

I gotta say, building multiples is a great way to do it, I've been clamping plates together for drilling, so it takes half the time.

Unfortunately my new DZ breakout boards aren't here yet, and I'm having problems with supply of my scanfail boards, but I should be able to get the mechanical and optical and most of the electrical work done.

So here's a couple of boring shots of progress so far...

[danielbriggs]

[norty303]

Bugger, just got round to measuring up the optical plate, and it's not big enough to do bounce mirrors for each head to get the alignment bang on at the dichros. Looks like it'll be shims then

I hate shims



Think I might get 2 new baseplates cut, as there is space in the projector. For some reason they put a stupid cutout in it, which is baseplate real estate I could use.



I'm going to call it a day now I think, and come back with a fresh head in the morning.

[LaNeK779]

why don't you turn the galvo driver boards the other way around (facing outwards) sir norty?
you will have to tune them sometime

bugger for the space restricting baseplate, bounce mirrors are a must for me, too

[dnar]

Nice mate. My 2 sats were built at the same time, using the same cases as you.

These cases make you appreciate the Edison/Mr Willing cases, that I sometimes drop the front off (2 screws) at a gig for small tweaks to the dichros.

The optical base they provide is just too small really, but hey, they are cheap cases. You gets what you pays for.

[norty303]

I've asked them to quote me for an optical plate like this.... It should be easy to swap it out at a later date and rebuild it. As it is, I'll get on with it as it is.



Chris, I can get at the pots ok on the driver boards as they are. The blank space in the bottom of the case next to them will be where the breakout and scanfail boards will be, so there'll be nothing in the way.


On an unrelated rant, why is it that... for a piece of kit we should all be using (US mostly excluded...), it is so hard to get hold of an even half decent scanfail board? Why is someone not producing them in their hundreds, and having them easily bought on some web shop?

[/rantoff]

[aktopjian]

by scanfail board do you mean a board that shuts off the lasers if there is a problem and galvos loose signal? Goldenstar has one that is pretty cheap. I bought one but have not hooked it up. Controls leds on front of case to give error signals for certain things, has a key lock hook up, interlock hook up and stuff like that. Dont know how well it works though because its still sitting in the package it came in.

[norty303]

Yes I've seen those but I think we all need the ability to do static beams, so not really suitable. The only 2 I know of that allow zones or horizons are from Guido and Gento.

[dave]

And PASS - Which is vastly superior to any of the above safety boards.. After using it for a couple of projectors, I realised just how much better it is..

Yes I've seen those but I think we all need the ability to do static beams, so not really suitable. The only 2 I know of that allow zones or horizons are from Guido and Gento.

[White-Light]

Kvant have a safety board now but whether or not they sell it separately I don't know.

I had a problem with mine intercepting standard cues in Scan Protection Mode as it seems a little over sensitive to slow scanned patterns (although you can adjust the trim pots).

However, in input mode, it just monitors for input signal and cuts the laser if that is lost.

PASS is the ultimate solution but its very expensive unless you're doing big professional shows.