How do you warm up your lasers?

[allthatwhichis]

Exactly what the title says... How do you?

It came up in a thread, somewhere areound here that you should warm your lasers up before running a "show" or they may not blank to their fullest power. I see that it works, if I don't warm mine up the green seems weak and even the blue doesn't seem to get it brightest, the maxyzmod just runs well no matter what.

I used to warm mine up by unhooking the ILDA plug from my projector, making a 2 pin plug and running it from the 5 volt output on the lasever green and hooking that to the 2 pins on my ILDA plug on the projector that blank my green. When unplugged, the blue TTL would come on, but the analog green needed the 5 volt to "lase". I would leave em on for 5 to 10 minutes, unhook the 2 pin plug, plug the ILDA cable into the projector and off I went. Seems like a lot just to warm them up. They my green died and David/Lasever stated that I may have ESD'd the green using this method, but swapped my green out for my anyway. I think we both agreed "I could have" but weren't 100% so being a good seller he hooked me up.

Now... I'm not sure how to warm my lasers up before playing. I "think" I have found a solution, it works, but I wanted to ask y'all for other methods. I have been opening the "Laser Media test" and opening the color pallete settings and using "high power", leaving it for 5 to 10 minutes and then playing. I assume this test has no blanking points so the lasers will be going 100% using the "high power" pallette setting. I hope... IS this reasonable?

So what'd y'all do to warm your lasers up?

[Banthai]

if like me you have a safety shutter i run my lasers at full power for about 15 mins with the safety key in the off position so the shutter is in the up position to block beams to the galvos

all the best ... Karl

[sbk]

I do the same : with the safety shutter closed, I set Mamba to show blanking lines (so no blanking), and run a show for 10 minutes...

[allthatwhichis]

There must be a setting in Pangolin I am missing then. I can't find a way to show a frame without blanking. That is why I use the Laser Media test frame... I don't have a shutter yet...

[Banthai]

Just create a frame with a single point ( like you would be doing a mirror bounce ) and use that

I would certainly think about getting a beam shutter, even if you only use the interlock pins on the ILDA connector .... at least if the ilda cable is pulled out .... it will stop stray unpredictable beams

sorry if i have "preached" ( Rev Laser ... AMEN ) about this before but even before i had decided what galvos i was going to use i had designed the interlock system for the safety shutter, i have a keyswitch and Emergency stop buttons on the control desk, the key is chained to my body so should i leave the desk ... no beams can be visible ..... i know that most people would say "dont need that for home use ... but i had implimented just that, when i first started at home .... my view is that ..... If it goes Tits up and becomes dangerous ... at least you can hit the Estop

here endeth the sermon for today .... Haliloooyaaaaa


all the best ... Karl

[DZ]

I haven't had time to implement a method on my projector yet because I just have not had the time to. But this does bring up an interesting point. First off, in pangolin, the only way to really get 100% output is to open the abstract generator and let it draw a white circle. This is the only easy way to do it as it sets the output to full and leaves it there. With the laser media test frame, I believe there is a time after it draw the frame that it blanks the laser before it "refreshes" the frame. So its not a true 100% output. I learned that from Bill at FLEM a few months ago. Ok so, back to the heating issue, when you do this "preheat" before running a show, thats great, it gets everything nice and toasty and more stable. The only problem is that when you are running the show, it is no longer on all the time and is now cooling down to a certain degree, especially during any delay between one song and another. My idea is simple, just need to get around to throwing a circuit together and installing it. On the ILDA connector there is a pin for the shutter, when a show has completed, there is nothing scanning or before the show has started this pin is low (0V). As soon as output begins the pin goes high (5V). So my idea was to implement a circuit that whenever that pin was at 0V, a circuit would place say 4.5V on the RGB signal lines. Since the shutter is blocking the beams there is no output to the scan head. And instantly, when there is output and the shutter signal goes to 5V, the 4.5V signal is removed from the RGB lines. While this method will not keep the lasers hot, it will prevent them from completely cooling down between shows or between songs in a show. A simple op-amp circuit would do the trick, but you will need to have a shutter in your projector.

David