New Member.First ILDA laser. Some questions on Drivers, ILDA voltages, Scanner tuning

[steven850]

Hello All,

My name is Steven and I am new to the world of ILDA lasers. I am a DJ Currently living in Germany.
Up until now I had a ES-300RGBV. (yes, I have read all of the posts about LW. This is not permanent. Saving up for a Kvant Spektrum 1,6) and have now acquired a LW Proline 1000RGB with 50K scanners.

I know its not great, but it beats the crap out of the little ES-300. The 300 had maybe 40mw output tops. The pro has around 280mw or so. (based on black alu foil with temp gun) Plus it has ILDA and I picked the whole thing up with case, 25M ILDA cable, Interlock, Safteys, and Lumax DAC for 500 bucks so I cant complain.


First off, the blue diode is way too weak to get any kind of decent white out of this thing. I was able to get a a half way decent white out of this thing using the color correction in ILDA but then my output falls below 120mw. As menitoned, I am aware of all of the laser world problems etc..
So what i want do now is a little pot tuning in order to try and bring the diodes back up to spec. or partial spec anyway. Usually doing smaller venues with the laser, TUV inspection for lasershows is a real PITA, not looking to get more than 300mw out of this thing. The reason I want to do this is so that the color balance is there without having to use the color correction in the ILDA software for 3 reasons.
1. When reverting back to DMX control, the colors are way out of balance.
2. the modules are not dimming linearly, I cant dim for audience scanning without losing blue completely and most of the green.
3. I pretty sure the modules are under-driven or the temperature setting is out of wack, when I dim down to 85%, I have no blue output remaining, and the green is down to about 50% output. at 60% output the only output remaining is the red, which is visible down to 3%.

I am knowledgeable with all things electronic and basic circuitry. What I need to Know is if anyone has pot identification on the driver boards. Here are some pics of the drivers. The one with the metal box is the driver for the green. From what I have gathered, the 2 pots next to the Db9 conn. are as follows. The pot at the top of the pics is the gain adjustment for the diode, an the lower pot is for TEC temp control?? Is this correct? The pots at the analog input, which one is max current, and which one is max temp? there is one red led one the board. this LED is always on. any ideas?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG531.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG532.jpg

The driver for the blue and the red, 4 pots, no idea which one does what. If this driver is anything like the S10017-1 then
VR1 - CurrentLimit
VR2 - Temp of Laser
VR3 - Diode Current
VR4 - Themal Protection

Can anyone verify this?

What about the LED's on the board? One is green and one is red, both are always on as soon as the laser is powerd up. Is the red temp warning?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG534.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG536.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG535.jpg

getting around 150mw out of the red. hoping to match the blue and green to the red for a rough 300 output with good white balance. Currently getting around 100mw green and 30mw blue. Diodes are rated at the following, RED @ 650mw, GREEN@500mw and BLUE@180mw, based on the stickers on the diode itself. All of the diodes stay ice cold when running. ambient temp of 21C, all diodes are at room temp(IR temp gun) with the green being the warmest at .3C warmer.

Any help that yall could give me in properly calibrating these diodes would be greatly appreciated.



A couple quick questions on ILDA voltages. From what I understand there should be -2.5 on pin 20 for the blue and +2.5V on pin 7 for the blue, for a total voltage differential of 5V. I have measured the output from my minilumax DAX and am getting 2.87V between the two pins. Pin 7 WRTG .98V and pin 20 WRTG 1.89V.
I am using HE-laserscan. lasermedia test pattern. Full brightness, No color correction. Running from a laptop.
Is is normal for the voltage to be this low?
Is this a problem with the software or the DAC istelf?
Could it be the laptop not supplying enough current to the DAC?
Use an active USB hub or a PC?

Last but not least, a couple of questions on scanner tuning.
I am wanting to tune these 50K scanners at 30k. I have read that the advantage to this is that you can run at 30K with a wider angle. How wide as a rule of thumb can one go with 50K running at 30K?
I also want to be 100% sure I am using the correct pots. here are pics of the scanner amps. From what I can tell it should be the 4 pots on the left.
IS - being Image Size
SG- Servo Gain
HFD- high Freq. Damping
LFD - Low Freq.Damping.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG526.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG527.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG528.jpg

I read the following in another post "I found the LW manual was wrong on a couple of sets I have played with... the HFD and LFD were the opposite way round" Is this just reffering to what the manual says vs whats on the board? or is the board mislabeled?

Sorry For all of the questions and the VERY long first post. I just don't want to kill this laser in the first 2 days. Any help will be IMMENSELY appreciated.

Thanks,

Steven

[steven850]

Tought I would add a few more pics of the laser diodes as well as test patterns.

Diodes
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG537.jpg

ILDA at 12k
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG540.jpg

ILDA at 50K
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG542.jpg

Colors with correction in ILDA, you can still see how underpowered the blue is.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG547.jpg

Grid, Should be white, here you can see how overpowering the red is in regard to the other colors.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/88689007/Laser/IMG554.jpg

Pics are not great, but cellphones dont like to photograph lasers.

[White-Light]

Most obvious thing is the scanners aren't doing 50K at that angle.

I think people on here who've had them say they do around 30-35K at ILDA standard (8 degrees) from memory.

[colouredmirrorball]

I believe a colour correction board has a range of options to get the colour balance right. Some members here are selling those. That might be a better option than messing around with drivers.
Also, it's normal that you don't measure 5 V out of a DAC signal, as the output is being modulated constantly (even though you might think it is not). If you're not measuring with an oscilloscope, you don't know much.

[steven850]

Yes, it is having trouble at 50K, gonna tune them to 30K and see what kind of an angle I can get out of these things.


Any further info on these color correction boards? Tried a search but didn't find much. Only relevant info was a group buy from 2010 that didn't really have any details on the board itself.

Checked the pulsing of the DAC signal when producing a static white dot. getting the same voltage @ 640Hz. So it could be that the peak voltage is higher. My meter only shows True RMS not instantaneous peak.

Anyone have any ideas on the driver pots??
Been noticing a lot of power output fluctuations on the blue and green. Seems to be a cooling issue, when I reduce the power to 70% or so they run stable. seems the TEC needs to be adjusted. Could be verifying my earlier question of the red LED's on the driver boards??

[White-Light]

http://shop.stanwaxlaser.co.uk/dz-co...oard-252-p.asp

[steven850]

Thanks for the link, well see if this helps with the colors.

Does anyone know what the pinout is on the diodes?