Laser Display Grid (ruler)

[JVD]

Hello All,

I have a question where possibly a Laser Display may be a solution. But because of my lack of knowledge about this hardware I turned to this forum.
At our company we produce stone slabs, at the quality check we need to mark in wich 'zone' on the slab there is a defect. For example A4 and H7... I am looking for a way to project a grid onto the border of a stone slab in such a way it can be turned on immediately. We now have a beamer/projector, but this needs to 'heat up' and the lights need to go out....
The size of the slabs are 3,5meters x 1,6meters and the projector can be about 3 meters away from the slab.

Can anyone advise me on a device that is able to to this?

kind regard and many thanks in advance!

[james]

Hello All,

I have a question where possibly a Laser Display may be a solution. But because of my lack of knowledge about this hardware I turned to this forum.
At our company we produce stone slabs, at the quality check we need to mark in wich 'zone' on the slab there is a defect. For example A4 and H7... I am looking for a way to project a grid onto the border of a stone slab in such a way it can be turned on immediately. We now have a beamer/projector, but this needs to 'heat up' and the lights need to go out....
The size of the slabs are 3,5meters x 1,6meters and the projector can be about 3 meters away from the slab.

Can anyone advise me on a device that is able to to this?

kind regard and many thanks in advance!

Certainly doable with a laser, a set of scanners and control signals. The questions are what wavelength (color), what power and safety regulations.

[JVD]

Certainly doable with a laser, a set of scanners and control signals. The questions are what wavelength (color), what power and safety regulations.

Thanks for answering. Color and wavelength i don't know.
And it should be safe work a workplace. Don't know if these answers make sense?

[james]

A laser that is powerful enough to be easily seen in normal room lighting, when scanned onto a large surface area like that is very dangerous. The static beam will burn you, could set things on fire and if it hits you in the eye, it will blind you.

That being said, applications like you described are used in all kinds of art and industry.

[mixedgas]

That is actually an off the shelf product from many vendors.

Lap-laser is one.
Virtek is another.
carterlaser.com comes to mind.

I have scrapped a few Virtek products for parts minus the controller, they are incredibly well built and designed.

usually the keywords to search by are "laser layout carbon fiber ply welding"

For most uses you want a green laser at 520 or 532 nanometers, and class IIIA safety classification

Older red systems are quite dim.

It is possible to build your own, but the professional systems have dimensional based software and calibration pucks.
They can find and record the defect point you are designating, for example.

The math to be done is a lot of sine, cosine, and arc-tangent. Actually generating the grid is fairly easy. Tying the co-ordinate systems together in 3D space is not.

Pangoscript and Scanner-Max driven by Mach-Dsp Galvos optimized for accuracy with large mirrors, comes to mind if you rolled your own.

Note for laser show folks, Virtek systems use very large mirrors, ultra stable galvos, and very slow speeds by our standards. Their galvo amps actually have a slew rate limiter, so ILDA 7K speed as set up, unless you downsize the mirrors about 20x and re-tune, then bypass the rate limiter. Used their way, they are damn fast, but they do not use the "point by point" path rendering methods we use. Their methodology extracts the full precision from their capacitive feedback systems. In other words they optimize for positioning accuracy, not scan speed like we do. They dont even turn on the laser till they hit their target and settle, , unless painting a guide line. They actually digitize the galvo position and make comparison in hardware before arming the laser. They also pre-compute the 3D space. So leave the used Virtek systems on Fleabay to the folks that need them.

Watching an inch and a half square mirror do 7K pps small angle is actually amazing for a 20 year old system without DSP. That is what I measured, again, different PID tuning and active position feedback in software/hardware, , way different. The reason for the big mirrors is to capture reflected light from the wireless, reflective positioning puck. This makes it easy for their software to find reference co-ordinates. This allows an operator to align their work without ultra precise jigging.

For those who get the vector joke "Different Strokes for Different Folks".

Yeah James, I know that sounds counter-intuitive to the "laser show way", but it is all about the hitting the vertices as accurately and as brightly as possible.

And beautiful hermetic sealing for the production line, that most of our systems don't have.

Virtek Projectors without Virtek controllers are at best, a pile of parts for an industrial user.

This picture is four older Virteks, big, precise, stable, sealed, and reliable.



Steve

[mixedgas]

Google "Industrial Laser Projector"

Steve

[JVD]

waw, many thanks for the info.

No, we defenitely don't want to put things on fire! Nor do we want to harm people.
Also we would like an of the shelf solution is that exists. We don't have the knowledge/capacity to build/maintain something like this ourselfs.