@ DZ: SELEM? Dunno, depends on where/when and how finished/travel-worthy the beast is. But I'm always happy to chat about circuitry, not that I'm doing anything special, and I never turn down an opportunity to learn.
@ cfavreau: As far as what the controls do, sometimes I don't even know, and I built the danged thing.
Seriously though, the top section is mostly image generation.
Basically, this:
x = (R+r)cos(t)-(r+O)cos(((R+r)/r)t
y = (R+r)sin(t)-(r+O)sin(((R+r)/r)t
From right to left:
Two oscillators: One is a quasi-quadrature oscillator that generates the baseline of the cycloid, sin/tri/square wave, the concentric control (rotary switch & pot) is rate and range, the control above is symmetry, the next pot is level/gain, and there's a phase adjust control. The second oscillator is the modulator for the cycloid, similar controls.
The two rotary switches are to select the waveform or an external signal (audio, typically or the audio amplitude envelope signal) The two toggle switches select cycloid/lissajous mode and enable voltage controlled amplifiers (VCA) that do amplitude modulation of the generator and modulation signals before they hit the multipliers that do the actual cycloid generation. The section with the two joysticks control gain and offset of the multipliers, the top one acts like a 'perspective' control visually, the other is hard to describe other than to say it does 'twisty' things to the image. Next are two more oscillators to drive the VCAs previously described with controls from rate/range/symmetry/gain and waveform select. Then there are offset and gain controls for the VCAs. The next section is no longer used, a couple of oscillator and amplifiers that did color modulation when I was using HeNe & Ar (I had a very weird electromechanical contraption). The joystick on the right used to be for position, but has been replaced by the new one I just built on the far lower right. There was a level control for that and a master level control before the image went to the scanner amps. The switches along the front edge were for the main shutter and beam pick-offs to go to lumias, some were motor controls.
The chopper panel, left to right:
Sensitivity for the audio envelope (had to put it somewhere) Range/rate/symmetry controls for an oscillator that can frequency modulate the actual chopper oscillator. Switches are FM on/off, FM signal normal/invert. Next is frequency, range and duty cycle for the chopper oscillator, switches are normal/invert, 'default' state for the cancel switches. The colored switches enable/bypass the chopper for each color RGB.
Color Modulator, left to right:
Controls for oscillator that is FM source for the other 3 oscillators, range/rate/symmetry/waveform select. three toggle switches to enable FM for each of the other three oscillators, next three switches enable AM modulation of the other three oscillator from an external source, selected by next three switches. There there are the 3 oscillators that do the actual color modulation, controls are FM gain/range/rate/symmetry/AM gain. Rotary switch selects waveform sin/tri/sw or external source. Now, even though the controls are colored RGB, they don't necessarily control that color laser, but that's how I'd start out. I can actually assign any one of the three oscillators (or its inverted signal) to any of the three lasers. The small push buttons step the selection up/down (the leds in that column lite to indicate the assignment) or I can go full on or full off. The three colored pots on the right are intensity controls for each laser and then a master intensity control. The small black push button resets the channel assignments to all on.
Joystick control:
The stick is x-y position, switches are for reversing direction, swapping the axes, and a damper circuit. Pots are for base offset and output level.
Front panel (though you can't see it in the pic) left to right:
Main power (switch/breaker), key switch, laser start pushbutton (with power on delay) laser stop, main shutter, and circuit breakers for all the power busses (+/- 12V regulated, +/- 20V unregulated, +12V unregulated high current for motors/solenoids and things)
I think that about sums it up.
The scanner drivers are in a separate enclosure with their own independent power supply. The optical/mechanicals are still being put together, I'll post pics of that mess sometime later.
I'm in the middle of rebuilding the cycloid generator now, I've come up with much better quadrature oscillators, I'm adding x/y/z axis rotation matrix. As I've got 3 pairs of scanners, I'm going to put in independent rotation/offset that can be slaved to the position joy stick or z-axis control joystick (not yet mounted).
And just the other day I stumbled onto using a stepper motor as a rotary encoder, a kind of poor-man's synchro, but I think will be very handy for lumia and scan glass positioning.