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Thread: Group Buy Compact 506 Complete Set

  1. #81
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    So, first things first: if the set that you got form us does not meet your needs you can return it, assuming that it is still in good condition which it sounds like most are. Please send an email to John (don't want to post the whole address because he is going to get spammed to death by bots, but its John at our primary domain (X-Laser)) .com) who will give you return shipping instructions and we will happily send you a check once we get them back.

    Karl, your venom is misplaced. Of course we will take care of issues, that’s just how we conduct ourselves. It does not take being scolded for us to do the right thing. By the way, if “some fool” is doing something unsafe with ANY laser product, ours or otherwise, please take whatever steps you feel are appropriate to remedy the situation. Certainly we would not want our product being misused.

    The issue here for us was simply one of internal communication - and that accounts for virtually every issue. It was not willful or scandalous - it was simply procedural as I will explain.

    We have never been set up to sell parts, we are setup to sell products - and there is a big difference. People ask us all the time about selling parts and we always politely decline because our internal procedures for putting out a quality product all rest on a carefully established series of steps that everyone knows, and can be double checked. When we do something ad hoc, things fall apart as was the case here, and for that I personally apologize.

    When we build a laser, or get ready to launch one to market, the sample has passed through a half dozen hands. There are meetings, long email conversations, schedules made, procedures created, tests done and everyone signs off. Its a whole big production before the first unit leaves the door. To borrow a phrase from Kvant, “We’re not perfect” but we put a lot of effort into trying to be great at it.

    In this case however, we had an idea about how to make some of our inventory available for folks who needed it. It was a 3 minute meeting when someone popped into my office with an idea to help out the PL community that needed complete sets, we had an amp and extra scanners, and so it seemed like a great and straightforward thing to do.

    But as we discovered, not having a half dozen sets of eyes on it, rigid QA procedures, meetings and tests leads to inconsistencies. Please bear in mind that this is not one or two people handling things end to end, this is a good sized team and that makes internal communication a good deal more difficult - especially when doing things that seem ‘simple.’

    The specs I had said the set would do 30K nicely with good linearity. The specs were not annotated that they had been created when we were working with the 3mm mirrors. That would have been caught during tuning if the person doing the tuning knew that the goal was to make the ILDA test pattern spot on at 30K. Their goal was to get the best tuning possible out of the set - without any particular benchmark in mind because no specific benchmark had been set during our normal resale product development cycle - because these were never really developed for resale and each individual customer specification is developed independently. An order was received, was sent to accounting, it was passed to production, and it was then passed to shipping.

    Adam said that the sets could come with the film and instructions for tuning. That’s what he posted, and that’s what we were going to do. However, without the meetings and such, the front office never knew to make a formal sub-assembly list in our accounting software of what was supposed to go in the box. Accordingly, the shipping guy was never alerted that something was missing… so when he got scanners, cables, an amp and an address, on it went.

    All of this is not meant to be an excuse, it is just the facts and in the end this ended up being much more complicated than we expected. We have evolved sophisticated systems for dealing with these complexities in lasers, and we have now realized that we will need to extend some of those systems to the sale of non-laser based parts.

    This has been a learning process for us, and without boring you with all of the nuances and details, I will just say that we will certainly be discussing this internally and developing a better policy for what is needed before we entertain future parts sales. All we can do at this juncture is say that we will make sure that everyone is taken care of as best we can, and do better moving forward.

    We take a lot of pride in the things we make and in the way we treat people. Hopefully that message comes through as we continue to strive to do better in these new arenas.

    Though as Bill noted the scanners/compact amp cannot hit the ILDA test pattern at 30K we do think that they are a solid and reliable set of gear for those who may find use for them at their current speed.

  2. #82
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    X-Laser, Pangolin and all
    I understand how miss communication can cause confusion and eventual chaos.. everyone was doing the best they could but the results could have been better. I am happy to keep my set, as I can use these larger-mirror scanners with the red board amps I have. That leaves me with my original 3mm 506 scanners that may perform better with this new 12V board than their larger mirrored sisters.

  3. #83
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    quick follow up.

    i had phone call with adam @ x-laser. he was super nice and it's very clear that they're sincere about resolving this. we've worked out a plan that i'm pretty psyched about implementing and testing.

    confidence is high.

    thank you adam!
    suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.

  4. #84
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    Quote Originally Posted by swamidog View Post
    quick follow up.

    i had phone call with adam @ x-laser. he was super nice and it's very clear that they're sincere about resolving this. we've worked out a plan that i'm pretty psyched about implementing and testing.

    confidence is high.

    thank you adam!
    mashes "like" button
    PM Sent...

  5. #85
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    Quote Originally Posted by laserbiker View Post
    X-Laser, Pangolin and all
    I understand how miss communication can cause confusion and eventual chaos.. everyone was doing the best they could but the results could have been better. I am happy to keep my set, as I can use these larger-mirror scanners with the red board amps I have. That leaves me with my original 3mm 506 scanners that may perform better with this new 12V board than their larger mirrored sisters.
    If you do that you need a notch filter board installed on the REDBOARD Y axis...
    Those have go to Mr. William R. Benner at Pangolin for tuning...

    Steve
    Qui habet Christos, habet Vitam!
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  6. #86
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    Quote Originally Posted by mixedgas View Post
    If you do that you need a notch filter board installed on the REDBOARD Y axis...
    Those have go to Mr. William R. Benner at Pangolin for tuning...

    Steve
    If he has the 4mm Asymmetric set (what we supplied to X-Laser), a notch filter shouldn't be needed. At this point, our 5mm mirrorset is the only one that needs the notch filter (on the Y-Scanner only).

    This, of course, will change when the new 8mm and 10mm mirrorsets arrive later this month....
    Sincerely,
    Ryan Smith
    ScannerMAX Mechanical Engineer
    ryan {at} scannermax.com

  7. #87
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    Thanks Steve and Ryan
    I am close to completing my latest portable all diode projector. I am anxious to test it to see how the red boards play with the larger-mirror
    scanner. Hopefully, they will work well enough that I can tune them form where they are. I am not too experienced at tuning scanners but I am sure I could master it eventually. I have a dt40W driver board with the notch filter pcb. Can I use it with the red board amps? If so, where in the signal chain of the driver board should it go? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
    Brian
    aka Laserbiker

  8. #88
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    Quote Originally Posted by laserbiker View Post
    Thanks Steve and Ryan
    I am close to completing my latest portable all diode projector. I am anxious to test it to see how the red boards play with the larger-mirror
    scanner. Hopefully, they will work well enough that I can tune them form where they are. I am not too experienced at tuning scanners but I am sure I could master it eventually. I have a dt40W driver board with the notch filter pcb. Can I use it with the red board amps? If so, where in the signal chain of the driver board should it go? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
    Brian
    aka Laserbiker
    Ryan, I stand corrected...

    Brian, I have a few, intact, RED BOARD notch filters left. If you need one, just Paypal me whatever it costs to ship the small Postal Service "Flat Rate Box" plus one Dollar for gas to the Post Office. Email/PM me before you do that.

    As for a DT filter working, I have no idea, notch filters are optimized for one or two shaft resonances. The answer is probably yes for up to 5 mm mirrors. There are a range of notch filter center frequencies and resonant "Q Factor" in use.
    The good news is they are widely tunable. The other good news is they usually are just copies of a stock filter for a 6210. The bad news is 95-97% of laser users do not have the required gear to optimize the tuning. The other bad news is there are several stock filters for Galvos with larger mirrors that may have been copied.

    For constant vector speed, constant jump size, cutting or marking, you would locate and damp the first resonance using the filter tuning procedure. This procedure uses a signal generator, digital oscilloscope, precision angle measurement fixture, and some very specific DAC inputs to the Galvo amp.

    For vector graphics, tuning the notch(es) is considerably more complex. The instrumentation required is also more involved. Typically you need instruments only available in a university or corporate lab.

    Steve
    Last edited by mixedgas; 07-08-2015 at 14:03.
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  9. #89
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    Thanks, interesting information.
    I Do not have access to adequate test equipment so adding the notch filter is out of the question. My plan is to try tuning to get the best performance out of the Red-Board drivers and larger-mirror galvos. If they can't perform the 30K ILDA pattern at 8 deg. or more, I will give up for now and wait for the aforementioned solution , post#83
    I should be able to test them by this weekend as I should complete the final wiring by then. Here is a picture with the red boards jammed in...I am hopeful I will be able to finish this project..... Probably my last for a while until those single-mode 2W reds come out.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails RGB Laser.JPG  

    Last edited by laserbiker; 07-08-2015 at 17:01.

  10. #90
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    Quote Originally Posted by swamidog View Post
    ... just wanted to report and verify my observations. i'm absolutely confident that this will get worked out ....
    Swami, thank you for taking the time to post actual findings, PC screen shots, measurements, and projected images. That is really appreciated! Keeping an eye on this thread, please do keep us up to date. The resolution of the issue is the important thing; things happen...

    -Jason

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