Hi! Firstly, I must thank all PL members for keeping this forum alive, which has given me so much information and advice about the fantastic world of lasers! (though I have not written anything yet). The web and all the forums should learn from PL, as it is a peaceful place to find friendly people to exchange information with!
My name is Giovanni and I am a 19 year old Italian student who is going to attend 5 years of university courses to study theoretical physics.
My story:
I have always been interested in light effects and their synchronization with music. In the last 7 years I have put together a complete DMX controlled stage lighting and sound system. Two years ago I bought a 100mw(?) green dmx-controlled stepper motor laser from DjTraximus on EBay which was pretty decent for disco and parties but quite boring when it comes to effects and sadly only green...
Last summer I saw a very powerful (it had to be at least 5W) RGB laser used for beam effects in an entertainment center; it was wonderful and I decided that it was worth a try! So I searched the web for that technology (a pity I didn't find PL at that time!) and I found some EBay auctions which sold RGB lasers for about 2k euros along with a DAC. It was an enormous amount of money for me but those colours were too tasty and I bought it!
The laser claimed to be 300mw TTL with (the cursed) iShow DAC and it was sold by NightLifeEquipment (which is now "dead", as the website is closed...uhm...)
The laser:
The laser arrived 3 weeks after placing the order, during Easter holiday.
As you see in the picture, it is a piece of crap made out of last-minute made poor quality parts. The worst thing - of course - are the dichros, which make alignment almost impossible (when this unit came, blue was so badly aligned that it did not hit the X galvo mirror and nothing came out of the front hole! I even feared that they had sent me an RGY projector!). I searched the web and eventually found PL and since then I have learnt lots of things about lasers. Wish I had found PL before buying that "thing"! I had enough skills in electronics to build a projector on my own with the help of this forum...Anyway, I took away that "dichros" (if they can be called that way...) and ordered new dichros + 3-axis adjustable mounts on EdmundOptics (which I heard about on PL). There was not enough room for them in the case, so I decided to re-arrange everything and took out all the components. Soon I discovered that the red laser was not a single unit, indeed it consisted of 2 diodes combined with a PBS cube. I thought it was absurd as the power was too low to justify such an approach; however, the diodes soon dropped to about 10% of their brightness (don't have a power meter) without any reason. I decided to abandon the PBS cube and I ordered a 150mw 650nm red diode (TTL) on EBay from Laserworld (about 40€ with shipping - lucky bid!). The poor-quality scanners (20k?) broke down while I was tuning them. I was desperate, as I didn't have enough money to afford some new ones, but I was lucky enough to win an auction on EBay from Laserworld and I bought their 50k scanners for only €250 shipping included! Let me say that they are really GREAT! I decided to remove the DMX board, because it needed differential 15V for power (which was provided by the old galvo boards). I decided to use only an ILDA connector. It took some days to get the projector completed and when I turned it on I found that the green PSU had something wrong and did not blank (always on). My nerves didn't manage to stand that after entire nights spent on building it and therefore I threw away that green and bought a 50mw TTL green again from Laserworld (which is settled in Europe, so I don't pay import taxes) for €120. It is a very cheap module (as the red - which I encapsulated into the heatsink of one of the original reds) but it does its job.
I assembled all together into the original case (leaving the unused parts, DMX and safety switch, unconnected) even if it was very, very small but somehow everything fitted into it! (not so good indeed but this projector is a "temporary" one). The alignment is very weak because the aluminium it is made of is too thin and when I close the unit after aligning, the case "stretches" and goodbye alignment! I could not afford a better alu board.Anyway, it seems ok for beamshows...
Soon I got fed up with iShow DAC, which was horrible, and bought the FB3 evaluation kit, which is really wonderful.
To summarize, I have spent about 3k euros and with the same price I could have bought a 500mw Laserworld professional analogue RGB laser!
I really hope that anyone, especially young guys with few money, learns from my mistakes!
This is a picture of the final unit:
Now I have decided to build a "real" projector with analogue modulation in a "real" case with "real" laser modules (red is weak, green blanks too slowly, blue has problems with TEC and sometimes gets really too dark for heating problems). I have very little money to spend at the moment (~1300€ if I borrowed some from my parents and grandparents). I have already contacted Bridge at Laserwave and asked him about the following components:
300mw 650nm ---> 200$
100mw 532nm ---> 250$
150mw 473nm ---> 1521$
What do you think about them? Is it difficult to turn down a little the green to get a good white? I would like to have your advice before buying these components, just to be sure that I buy what I really want - as this expense will make me run out of money...I will use this projector at home and only for beamshows.
Thank you very much in advance! Hope to become a very "powerful" PL member in the next months/years!!!