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Thread: The EK-DZ Advanced Laser Router!

  1. #171
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    Coolness...
    RR

    Metrologic HeNe 3.3mw Modulated laser, 2 Radio Shack motors, and a broken mirror.
    1979.
    Sweet.....

  2. #172
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    Amazing they are on time !

    Oh sh*t ...I am in the wrong place

    Click image for larger version. 

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ID:	48503PM coming thru to change shipping destination

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ID:	48504Apologies for any hassle this might cause !
    Cheers

  3. #173
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    Quote Originally Posted by dkumpula View Post
    Just over a year from concept to first run production completion.
    It was a little longer than that. But even at 18-20 months (depending on when you want to call "concept"), it's still a rapid development. (Remember that they had a demo unit running at SELEM in 2014, and prior to that they had one running in Florida at FLEM earlier that same year.)

    The truly amazing thing is that they managed to go from a vague idea: "we need another run of splitters, but this time let's add the ability to do projector chases with DMX intput" to having a fully-functional router prototype that could do tons more than anyone had ever dreamed of asking for in just a couple short months. Really the bulk of the development time was spent tweaking the final design (which is why DZ's router looks different from the production models), adding even more features (which required new hardware in some cases), working out production costs (which was a huge hurdle), and most importantly, getting people to sign up to pre-order them.

    Considering that I've been working on the Pangolin-based laser diode driver project for nearly 6 years now (and been through half a dozen variations) and STILL do not have a commercial unit, I have to say that David and Ed have really pulled a rabbit out of their hats with this project. It's a shame the initial production run was so small, but for those of us who will be getting our units (hopefully later this week), it's going to be incredible!

    And ironically, it may well be that Ed ends up being the guy who finally brings my ill-fated driver project across the finish line. He's got a lot on his plate these days (besides the routers), but when he has time he has agreed to take a look at it. We are so close that I feel confident he can give it the final push we need. And if he does, that will be yet another success story for the Aldebaran-Systems team!

    Adam

  4. #174
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    ^ Where is the "like" button on here??
    PM Sent...

  5. #175
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    BTW, I just got off the phone with David, and he said that Ed was planning to ship the routers either later today or first thing tomorrow morning. WOOT!

    Adam

  6. #176
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    Hey guys, sorry for the delay, as soon as I have the tracking numbers I'll get them forwarded to everyone.

  7. #177
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    Just made transfer of shipping funds!
    Sorry for delivery address change!
    Cheers
    PS. @ Bradford ...." Pangolin-based laser diode driver project" ...pls forgive my higorants ... but what exactly is this project?
    Last edited by catalanjo; 10-01-2015 at 13:16.

  8. #178
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    Quote Originally Posted by catalanjo View Post
    @ Bradford ...." Pangolin-based laser diode driver project" ...pls forgive my higorants ... but what exactly is this project?
    Actually, I was the one who posted that, not Brad. And if you want the story, be forewarned - it's a long one!

    This project goes *way* back. It started around late 2008. Bill Benner at Pangolin was finishing up a bunch of work on what would eventually become the Lasorb. As part of this work, he had tested over 2 dozen laser diode drivers, from hobbyist units like the Die-4-drive and the early flexmod to commercial ones that Lasever and CNI were using and even some very high-end units from Coherent and Mells-Griot. None of the drivers were "perfect" in Bill's opinion. They all had their own drawbacks. Some were not linear over a wide range of current. Others had little to no protection for excessive voltage. Many had stability issues (they could be made to oscillate under certain conditions). None had any effective static discharge protection.

    Faced with the lack of a solid reference driver, Bill designed his own driver and used that to power the diodes that were used during the development of the Lasorb device. (He needed a very "safe" driver so he could be sure that it was static that was killing the diode, and not the driver.) Once the Lasorb development was complete though, he had this circuit just sitting there. He had no plans to go into the diode driver business, so he gave the circuit to Mo Ayub (Daedal here on PL) so he could market it. (some of you may remember that back in those days Mo sold a shitload of diodes, not unlike DTR does today.) Unfortunately, Mo didn't have the time to do anything with the circuit because he had just changed jobs and was really busy.

    That's where I got involved. Even though I wasn't an electrical engineer, I felt certain that I could find one who would be able to help bring this product to market. Note that the original circuit was only capable of delivering 250 ma of current. It was designed to drive the 660 nm long open-can reds that lots of people used back then. I wanted to update the driver to handle larger currents so it could be used for IR pump diodes as well as reds. But I didn't have much luck getting other engineers to get involved, so the project was shelved. (I did try substituting my own parts into the circuit, and subsequently burned up a lot of red diodes during my own tests, however!)

    Then the 445 nm blues hit the market. This would have been around the summer of 2010. Coincidentally, this was also a time when diode drivers were in short supply. So I dusted the project off and tried to do something with it. Mo had settled into his new job by then, and even though he was still very busy, he tried to get involved. I helped where I could, but since I lacked the intrinsic knowledge that most electrical engineers have, I spent a lot of time investigating solutions that turned out to be dead ends. And after a few months, Mo had to bow out again due to work constraints. At this point I foolishly thought I could finish the driver myself. Once again I bought a bunch of parts and started experimenting. It was an exercise in frustration. I never did get things to work the way I wanted.

    Fast forward to late 2011 and early 2012. Another PL member (Kecked, aka Marc Rubin) got involved with the project. By then the requirements had changed dramatically, in part to support the "Big green" initiative here on PL (which, unfortunately, did not pan out either). We were talking about developing a driver with a replaceable daughter board that could be swapped out for higher current applications. We were considering 0-8 amp, 0-25 amp, and 0-40 amp versions of the circuit! The design of the circuit had already been through several re-writes by this time, and while the "secret sauce" from Bill's original design was still buried deep inside, the rest of the circuit had changed radically. (Part of this was due to the simple fact that many of the parts Bill used in his design were no longer in production!)

    Marc and I both ordered tons of parts during this effort, and I think Marc re-designed the board layout no less than 6 times himself. He spend a LOT of effort trying to get this driver done. We even tried various output schemes, including MOSFETs, Darlington Transistors, and a few other weird ideas that went nowhere. Unfortunately, Marc and I never could meet the performance target we had set for ourselves, despite the many different solutions we tried. In retrospect, we were probably overly ambitious. So once again, the project stalled.

    That brings us up to 2013, when there was a renewed interest in the design. DZ got involved, and Bill himself jumped back in to help finalize several key issues. Again, I was trying to make this happen by any means possible. This involved yet another complete re-design of the circuit, which Bill basically did himself. I ordered even more parts, and got more proto-boards made up, but we ran into the same old roadblocks we had experienced earlier, and Bill's time was being taken up by far more important things at Pangolin (such as the new scanners and the new Vrad actuators).

    One issue that was paramount (at least in my mind) from the very beginning was the complete and total elimination of any overshoot on the current profile no matter if you were idling at just above threshold or maxing current out at 5 amps or more. This is because I had witnessed other drivers killing diodes due to current overshoot (and in some cases ringing overshoot that lasted for 5 cycles or more) on my oscilloscope tests, and I absolutely wanted this driver to be perfect in this regard. Note that Bill's original design had none of this, but it also could only deliver 250 milliamps. I wanted the same performance all the way to 5 amps (or more).

    Anyway, in part due to the slow communications (everything was being done via E-mail), we never got things "perfect". And Bill really had more important things to do. However, about the time I was ready to give up, Andrew from X-Laser got involved. He was willing to take over from where we were and do the final tweaks to get the design stable. And by SELEM in 2014 he had a working prototype that was very stable up to about 3 amps. (He demo'd it at SELEM that year.) For currents beyond 3 amps, he felt the design needed more work, so once again we weren't ready to release it.

    Andrew continued to tweak the driver well into the spring of this year, and he got it as close as he could, but he admitted that the 5 amp goal was unrealistic if we still wanted to keep the excellent low-current response. So we agreed to modify the spec target again. But then in the summer Andrew got tied up with another project and couldn't work on the driver anymore. That left me "up the creek".

    Fortunately, about a month ago, Ed Keefe (together with DZ, they make up the genius behind "Aldebaran-Systems") said that he would be willing to finish the project - assuming he could work on it after he got his plate cleared up. Right now he is up to his ears in other work, but once that is completed he feels confident that he can finish the driver. There are only a couple add-on features that need to be tested (idle-beam suppression, over-temp protection of the output transistor, and some tweaks to the filtering network). We also are considering a change to the current-sensing scheme - right now there are 4 different resistors that can be switched in or out and we'd like to reduce that to 2 or 3.

    Assuming Ed can get some free time, I think he will be able to finish the design. And we already have someone lined up to handle the initial production run of these things. They won't be cheap, but they should be within the budget of the average hobbyist. (They will be more expensive than the Flexmod, but not excessively so.) If we can't hit a reasonable price-point, then there's no point in producing them, and Ed knows this.

    That being said, producing these things has never been about making a lot of money. My guess is that the profit per unit will be less than $5. So basically, it will be barely enough to cover someone's time to handle processing the orders, boxing them up, and putting them in the mail. The whole point of all of this was always to get a quality driver into the hands of people who are building projectors. Sadly, it seems that not many people are doing that these days, but if there are some home-builders left out there, I'd like to see this driver become available to them.

    And believe it or not, this is the SHORT version of the driver's long history. I have a 2" stack of paperwork on this project that spans over 6 years. I've got 4 figures invested in it, and I'm sure Marc Rubin has at least that much, if not more. X-laser has also spent a ton of money on it, and Mo, DZ, and a few others here on PL have got a lot of their time in it as well. It turns out that making a driver that is rock-solid stable at 200 ma all the way to 5 amps isn't as simple as it sounds - at least not when you're trying to keep the cost down to something reasonable while still incorporating lots of diode protection features.

    Adam

  9. #179
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    Now that this is days away... I guess it's time to get serious about a tablet. But... I don't know the first thing about them or "Touch OSC" or whatever it's called. Is whatever you created on your tablet to control these things going to be made available along with how to "install" it?
    PM Sent...

  10. #180
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    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post
    Actually, ............. it's a long one!........Adam
    Fascinating read ! Click image for larger version. 

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    Cheers

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