Congrats to the winners of the C506/Mach DSP systems at SELEM!
Since announcing this configuration is available now to the laserist community, there have been several repeat questions via phone call, PM, email and in person, so I figured I would compile the common questions and answers here.
1. What is the cost?
2. What is the lead time?
3. What is the performance I can expect?
4. I bought some galvos in 2013/2014/2015/2016/etc from such-and-such with/without third party amps. Can I just buy a Mach DSP and tune it myself/have you tune it for me?
1. What is the cost?
Systems are $995 for 3mm and 4mm systems, and $1095 for 5mm, 6mm, 8mm and 10mm systems. The cost difference is due to the increasing costs for us to manufacture as the systems get larger. Mounts get more expensive, mirrors are more expensive, and they take us longer to tune notch filter (if applicable) and balance the mirrors, which all cost money. We realize this is not exactly 'cheap' but we are also not looking to target the low end market with these galvos. They are more of a mid-range system, with quality and performance greater than the typical Chinese galvo, but not quite at the Cambridge 6215 / Saturn series level.
2. What is the lead time?
2018 has been an absolute record year for ScannerMax, with sales this year beating sales of all prior years combined, and there is still a lot of time left! Realistically, lead times are 12 weeks or so from pre-paid invoice. This is simply due to the backlog from many industrial orders we are still fulfilling. With our new manufacturing facility scheduled to be open and in full swing by late-2018/early 2019 including a full crop of new assembly techs, we are hoping to cut this by two-thirds or more, and maybe even have galvos “in stock” around a one-year time frame from today. Currently, everything is still built to order, and will continue to be Made in the USA!
3. What is the performance I can expect?
The C506 was only ever designed to be a solid 30K performer. There are many reports online of people being able to achieve 50kpps with 3mm mirrors on modified Chinese amplifiers, and some early adopters with Mach DSP doing around 40K. Kvant regularly delivers projectors tuned to 40K with their amplifiers. These scanners shine in their ability to scan very wide angles at these speeds, rather than struggling to do 30K at 8 degrees like some products on the market.
Minimum performance specs:
3mm – 35K
4mm – 30K
5mm – 30K
6mm – 28K
8mm – 24K
10mm – 18K
Realistically you can probably modify and adjust the tunings for your own needs and achieve better performance, we are not tuning these for absolute razor-edge performance, similar to how car manufacturers will tune a car engine for reliability and economy rather than absolute performance.
4. I bought some galvos in 2013/2014/2015/2016/etc from such-and-such with/without third party amps. Can I just buy a Mach DSP and tune it myself/have you tune it for me?
The simple answer is no. The C506 has three connector options, two of which are pretty well known, the White ‘MiniCT’ and red ‘MicroMatch’ connectors. If your galvos have either of these connectors, it is not compatible with the Mach DSP.
Quoting Bill:
“The C506 normally used let's call it "conventional polarity" whereas our Saturn scanners used the opposite polarity which has better signal-to-noise. Recently we have made a new circuit board that goes on the C506 scanner that allows it to deliver the correct polarity for our driver. Everyone else [other galvo manufacturers] chose the polarity they chose because of legacy reasons. Since we started out fresh and had no legacy, we chose a polarity that maximizes signal to noise ratio.”
Simply put, the Mach DSP driver is not compatible with any galvos out there ‘in the wild’ (unless they were ordered with a Mach DSP!). We do not forsee this changing any time soon – there were a few questions about developing a new digital amp which uses the legacy polarity, or modifying old galvos with new position sensors to work with Mach DSP, but these are just things that we do not have the bandwidth or the market to explore right now.
Hope this answers some of the more common questions we have been receiving lately!
Thanks,