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Thread: Hello All, Laser Question/Help

  1. #21
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    I work in Newark as well. Executive Banquet and Conference Center on 896 just south of Newark. And I personally don’t have a problem with Comcast. :-) Once you get hooked on lasers, you will begin to adopt the attitude that... well, there ARE other girlfriends out there. Lol. We can certainly plan to get together sometime.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bradfo69 View Post
    I work in Newark as well. Executive Banquet and Conference Center on 896 just south of Newark. And I personally don’t have a problem with Comcast. :-) Once you get hooked on lasers, you will begin to adopt the attitude that... well, there ARE other girlfriends out there. Lol. We can certainly plan to get together sometime.
    Wow, real close to me, I work off Salem Church Road and Gender Road. I was hoping to post some photos of the inside last night but never got around to it. Maybe tonight I will report back. And yeah, would be cool to get together. Where is your venue you test at located?

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    Okay, here is some pics inside. Let me know what you all see! Hard to get good pictures at all.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails 20200107_185122.jpg  

    20200107_185138.jpg  

    20200107_185410.jpg  


  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by jdavis7765 View Post
    Wow, real close to me, I work off Salem Church Road and Gender Road. I was hoping to post some photos of the inside last night but never got around to it. Maybe tonight I will report back. And yeah, would be cool to get together. Where is your venue you test at located?
    Ok, so that's about 5.2 miles. It's Executive Banquet and Conference Center, 2 miles south of the I-95 and 896 interchange. 205 Executive Drive. I used to have all my gear stored here but, the grumblings from staff, the owners and landlord about "Mount Lasermore" and stuff hidden all around the building dictated I get a storage facility that's a few hundred yards away.
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    I can't identify the type of scanners in your projector, but I did find several images that link to listings of Emma Laser projectors... They all show a single scanner amp board that is identical to yours. Assuming that these are the same units, Ali-Express is claiming 45Kpps speeds for them. I highly doubt that they are actually capable of that, but when you get the new units installed it would be a good idea to do some controlled testing to see just what they *are* capable of.

    The large red board with the 4 white connectors on the top and the two groups of blue trim pots is the scanner amp board. It's very unlikely that anything was damaged on this board. Nonetheless, they may send you a new board along with the new scanners. (More likely that they just send the scanners though.)

    If they send you a new board with the scanners, be sure to swap it out at the same time as you replace the scanners. The reason is that your original board will have been tuned at the factory to match your existing set of scanners. The replacement scanners may not have exactly the same characteristics, so if you have a new board to go with the new scanners, you'll want to install that new board as well since it should have been tuned to match the new scanners.

    Once you're done swapping parts, load up the ILDA test pattern at 8 degrees and see how it looks at 10K speed. Then slowly increase the speed while watching the pattern. (Make sure you leave the size setting at whatever number gives you an 8 degree scan angle.) See if you can get up to 30K speed while still keeping the center circle just touching the edges of the middle square. If the circle starts to pull away from the square, or if it starts to distort into an elliptical or spiral shape, then you are scanning too fast. Back the speed down until the test pattern looks normal.

    Once you have a maximum speed figured out (either 30K or some speed less than that), leave the speed at that max setting and now try increasing the size control to make your scan angle bigger. Again, keep your eye on the test pattern and pay close attention to the center circle. If it starts to pull away from the sides of the square, or if it starts to distort into an ellipse or a spiral, STOP. Back off on the size until it looks right. Now you have a size and speed limit for complex images. You *can* go wider than this for simple images or beam cues, but you must pay attention to the pattern and listen to the scanners... If the pattern starts to look bad or the scanners start to whine or squeal, STOP! If you continue scanning like that you will damage your scanners.

    When you are done, please post your results. If the specs on Ali-Express are true, you *should* be able to easily hit the 30K speed mark, and even at 30K you should be able to pump the size up to around a 12 degree scan angle before you start seeing distortion on the ILDA test pattern. Maybe a tad wider than that even.

    However, given that most of the stuff on Ali-Express is over-rated, I would not be surprised if you hit the speed limit at 25K or less when scanning at 8 degrees, and in that case to go wider than 8 degrees on the test pattern you'll need to drop down to 20K or even 15K speeds. But like I said, I'm curious to see what your results are.

    Adam

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post
    I can't identify the type of scanners in your projector, but I did find several images that link to listings of Emma Laser projectors... They all show a single scanner amp board that is identical to yours. Assuming that these are the same units, Ali-Express is claiming 45Kpps speeds for them. I highly doubt that they are actually capable of that, but when you get the new units installed it would be a good idea to do some controlled testing to see just what they *are* capable of.

    The large red board with the 4 white connectors on the top and the two groups of blue trim pots is the scanner amp board. It's very unlikely that anything was damaged on this board. Nonetheless, they may send you a new board along with the new scanners. (More likely that they just send the scanners though.)

    If they send you a new board with the scanners, be sure to swap it out at the same time as you replace the scanners. The reason is that your original board will have been tuned at the factory to match your existing set of scanners. The replacement scanners may not have exactly the same characteristics, so if you have a new board to go with the new scanners, you'll want to install that new board as well since it should have been tuned to match the new scanners.

    Once you're done swapping parts, load up the ILDA test pattern at 8 degrees and see how it looks at 10K speed. Then slowly increase the speed while watching the pattern. (Make sure you leave the size setting at whatever number gives you an 8 degree scan angle.) See if you can get up to 30K speed while still keeping the center circle just touching the edges of the middle square. If the circle starts to pull away from the square, or if it starts to distort into an elliptical or spiral shape, then you are scanning too fast. Back the speed down until the test pattern looks normal.

    Once you have a maximum speed figured out (either 30K or some speed less than that), leave the speed at that max setting and now try increasing the size control to make your scan angle bigger. Again, keep your eye on the test pattern and pay close attention to the center circle. If it starts to pull away from the sides of the square, or if it starts to distort into an ellipse or a spiral, STOP. Back off on the size until it looks right. Now you have a size and speed limit for complex images. You *can* go wider than this for simple images or beam cues, but you must pay attention to the pattern and listen to the scanners... If the pattern starts to look bad or the scanners start to whine or squeal, STOP! If you continue scanning like that you will damage your scanners.

    When you are done, please post your results. If the specs on Ali-Express are true, you *should* be able to easily hit the 30K speed mark, and even at 30K you should be able to pump the size up to around a 12 degree scan angle before you start seeing distortion on the ILDA test pattern. Maybe a tad wider than that even.

    However, given that most of the stuff on Ali-Express is over-rated, I would not be surprised if you hit the speed limit at 25K or less when scanning at 8 degrees, and in that case to go wider than 8 degrees on the test pattern you'll need to drop down to 20K or even 15K speeds. But like I said, I'm curious to see what your results are.

    Adam
    Thank you for the reply and the wealth of information! It is scheduled for delivery tomorrow so we see if it comes with the scanner board. They did not specify what was included. I am assuming if they didn't the laser may need some work once the galvos are replaced? Does not look like there are any labels in the pots on Amp board which looks like it may be a pain. If it comes Friday, I will post back on the weekend letting everyone know how it went as well as the max scan speed testing!

    Thanks again everyone!

  7. #27
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    Those are the ugliest scanners I have ever seen. More like stepper motors

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    I thought so too at first, but if you look closely you'll see that the short, fat armature body looks an awful lot like the body on the compact-506 scanners. I've seen a couple different Chinese scanners recently that seem to be copying Bill's design; I wonder if this is yet another attempt. I'm sure they can't match the performance of the Pangolin units, but it's interesting how fast the design was picked up by various manufacturers.

    The position detector portion looks like a standard clone of the venerable Cambridge 6800 design, so no surprises there. But yeah, seeing that large position detector on such a short, fat scanner body definitely looks odd.

    Still, like I posed above, Ali-Express is claiming 45K speeds on these things. Sure, we all know to take those claims with a grain of salt, but I'm nonetheless curious as to how fast they can be pushed.

    Adam

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post
    I thought so too at first, but if you look closely you'll see that the short, fat armature body looks an awful lot like the body on the compact-506 scanners. I've seen a couple different Chinese scanners recently that seem to be copying Bill's design; I wonder if this is yet another attempt. I'm sure they can't match the performance of the Pangolin units, but it's interesting how fast the design was picked up by various manufacturers.

    The position detector portion looks like a standard clone of the venerable Cambridge 6800 design, so no surprises there. But yeah, seeing that large position detector on such a short, fat scanner body definitely looks odd.

    Still, like I posed above, Ali-Express is claiming 45K speeds on these things. Sure, we all know to take those claims with a grain of salt, but I'm nonetheless curious as to how fast they can be pushed.

    Adam
    The package is out for delivery so should be here today. Pretty quick since it was shipped on the 8th from Hong Kong!

  10. #30
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    So, package arrived and I cracked it open. Looks like they included the amp board as well as the galvos. It appears though that these are slightly different than what is currently installed. I had to purchase new screws as this one must be screwed in from the board below. Got all of that done but it appears that these galvos are positioned slightly different so there is a signifagant amount of laser reflection shooting off the X mirror and missing the Y mirror due to its postioning. I do not believe there is an easy fix for this other than repositioning the galvos with a custom bracket of sorts (may need a machine shop if that is the route I go). Pics below. Good news is, all of the animations are spot on, aside from some color is messed up which I am assuming is the galvo alignment.

    Thoughts?
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails 20200110_205031.jpg  

    20200110_204656.jpg  

    20200110_190333.jpg  

    20200110_205008.jpg  


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