New EYEMAGIC Scanners EMS7000

[JohnYayas]

1) Bill said, "These bearings are 100% custom made including the size. Because of these factors, a single one of these bearings costs more than the entire manufacturing cost of most scanners today."

2) Most scanners today are Chinese.

Therfore, by logic, Bill said his bearings costs more than the entire cost of Chinese scanners today.

Maybe somewhere else he said something about competition but not in that statement.

Note: It was me that mentione competitor.

[mixedgas]

Begin Quote:
The main thing that bothers me about the ILDA pattern is the fact that the scanned image is supposed to display the circle inside the square. This is actually a distorted output of the input signal where the square is in the circle. IMO this makes no sense whatsoever. For my understanding of positioning systems or PID controls, output should equal input. Scanners tuned in this manner, must be prone to also distort other complex images.
End Quote.

No disrespect intended, but...
I think you'll find the circle collapsing in the square is/was intended as a 3 dB down point on the frequency response at that condition, and well within control theory.

Steve

[JohnYayas]

Begin Quote:
The main thing that bothers me about the ILDA pattern is the fact that the scanned image is supposed to display the circle inside the square. This is actually a distorted output of the input signal where the square is in the circle. IMO this makes no sense whatsoever. For my understanding of positioning systems or PID controls, output should equal input. Scanners tuned in this manner, must be prone to also distort other complex images.
End Quote.

No disrespect intended, but...
I think you'll find the circle collapsing in the square is/was intended as a 3 dB down point on the frequency response at that condition, and well within control theory.

Steve

Unless you are controlling a car and want to keep it on the road... or if you are attempting to take down a plane with a missile, etc.

[heroic]

I'd *highly* doubt that Bill, et all, would consider Chivos to be 'competition' for their slated supergalvo... CT is 'competition', and, at least from the standpoint of 'industry-posturing', EMS would-be, as-well.. Chivos are, well.. essentially 'disposable cameras'... up-to / including the much-hyped DT 40 and 50 Pros..

You can't compete with China; if the Chinese manufacturers are your competition, you're screwed. You will never beat them on price, and their customers generally don't care too much about quality- and that quality is constantly improving.

My estimate for BOM cost on a set of CT 6215s is about $600, hence my comment. I can get jet engine bearings for $600. Heck, I can get ABEC-9 SiC/teflon bearings for $100, and that's not even in volume.

As for getting bearings custom made- when I find that I need a custom bearing for a design, I generally take it as a sign that I ought to re-engineer sizes and positions so that I can fit a standard part, just because it's so much cheaper and more repeatable.

[absolom7691]

and their customers generally don't care too much about quality- and that quality is constantly improving.

I believe that was Jon's point. The fact that the customers that buy chivos are not doing large lightshows. I have a pair of PT 30Ks.. I paid $250 for the whole set. I do lightshows on my living room wall. If I were doing a gig for $2000 or more, there is no way I would trust my show to a $250 pair of glavos. Hell, I would even choose G-120s, which have a history or torsion bar troubles, to a paid gig before I trusted chivos. Sure, the quality of chivos might be getting better, although I see no signs of that, but that makes them better junk glavos. This has been discussed at length by Bill, Adam, even the Admin of the forum got in on the topic of why chivos don't compare and probably never will at the price they sell for against the higher-end galvos. Thing is, companies are not losing money to the cheap galvos. If the chivos weren't around, I doubt the people who would normally buy chivos would break the bank to buy higher-end stuff. There is not that much competition on that front.

[White-Light]

1) Bill said, "These bearings are 100% custom made including the size. Because of these factors, a single one of these bearings costs more than the entire manufacturing cost of most scanners today."

2) Most scanners today are Chinese.

Therfore, by logic, Bill said his bearings costs more than the entire cost of Chinese scanners today.

Maybe somewhere else he said something about competition but not in that statement.

Note: It was me that mentione competitor.

Just one correction from your reading of it I think you'll find that from your own quote it was:

"a single one of these bearings costs more than the entire manufacturing cost of most scanners today."

That's very different to the retail price.

In fact usually a fraction of retail given that many retailers on many goods (don't know about laser wholesale costs) have 100% mark up on the suppliers costs. I wouldn't know how much distributors add to the manufacturers price however I think we can safely assume the manufacturing cost is a fraction of the final retail, most probably a 1/4 or less allowing for two sets of 100% mark ups.

[White-Light]

This seems to contradict your article here: http://www.pangolin.com/ILDAtest.html

Maybe you're saying that describing a product as being a "30K scanner" is something entirely different from saying "this scanner runs at ILDA 30K pps", which is the phrasing used by that article about the ILDA test pattern. If the former is, in fact, "more to do with heat inside the scanner than anything else", then I'd like to understand what the exact criteria are.

Again not taking any sides here as only Pangolin can provide information on what they meant.

However, I would interpret this as meaning that if a scanner generates too much heat then the claimed speed is unsustainable for any length of time as it would be logical to assume that if more heat was generated than could be dispersed at a given speed, then overtime the glavo would heat and eventually shut down or fail.

So my interpretation of what is being said is that the ILDA test pattern as a test is dependant on:

1. The speed it is displayed at

2. The angle it is displayed at

3. The sustainability of the above

Logic would suggest that whilst technically you could call a galvo an ILDA X speed galvo if it met a certain speed (1) within the confines of the normal angle (2), ultimately whether or not it could be considered an X speed glavo in practice will depend on (3) unless you do laser shows that are always shorter than the heat up to shut down period of time.

[JohnYayas]

Just one correction from your reading of it I think you'll find that from your own quote it was:

"a single one of these bearings costs more than the entire manufacturing cost of most scanners today."

That's very different to the retail price.

In fact usually a fraction of retail given that many retailers on many goods (don't know about laser wholesale costs) have 100% mark up on the suppliers costs. I wouldn't know how much distributors add to the manufacturers price however I think we can safely assume the manufacturing cost is a fraction of the final retail, most probably a 1/4 or less allowing for two sets of 100% mark ups.

You are NOT correcting me because that was the point I was making. Manufacturing cost of of a chinese scanners is probably in the double digit range. A lot of people are making a lot of assumptions. Maybe it will cost Bill $2000 just to make a scanner (I am throwing out the number. It could be $200 or $20000, I don't know.) But, it is in the search for a better scanner that outperforms anything out there. Obviously, he isn't going to be able to sell his scanners at his research/prototype cost. But, if he truly can create his 4X performance scanner then refactoring can be done to scale down if necessary to a feature/price compromise that makes money. Or maybe he just shelves the whole design for a rainy day when there are better parts of design alternatives.

I was at FLEM and while not really paying attention, I can attest to the fact that the Eyemagic scanners did not perform even as close to advertised. I take it at Bill's word that what he is doing to make a scanner is true. I haven't seen any lies out of him, yet. So, what is the point of trying to disprove him or try to one up him in regards to this when you haven't even come close to walking in his shoes?

[norty303]

In fact usually a fraction of retail given that many retailers on many goods (don't know about laser wholesale costs) have 100% mark up on the suppliers costs.

I can buy DT scanners from China for half the price of the UK, and the people I buy from must have a reasonable markup to make it worthwhile (at least 33% I'd have thought). And thats assuming they buy direct from Jian, and not from a local distributor (who also takes a slice). That makes them very cheap scanners to produce. And DT's are at the upper end of the Chinese scanners (imo).

I think there is a lucrative market emerging, for 'better than Chivo' performance/reliability, for 'less than CT money' to satisfy the growing number of people buying more affordable projectors, for those slightly less mission critical shows, without having to go fully 'gold plated'. The sensible middle ground option if you will.

Does the top end need improving?

[JohnYayas]

Does the top end need improving?

Yes, and no. Not for beam shows. But, faster speeds will allow for more complex graphics show since you can't do a whole lot without introducing flicker. Also, with today's software that has dynamically generated content, there is no opportunity to manually tweak it before it is displayed so either it has to be very optimized before it goes to the scanner (which is very difficult since there are so many variables) or the scanners better be fast enough to handle lazily generated points. With Pangolin's Beyond package and desire to do 3D laser graphic processing at real time I can see how they would want to squeeze as much out of a scanner as they can. I am not claiming that is their motivation for creating a scanner, though. If I were to guess, I would say that their motivation is to be able to sell an end to end solution at some point in the future. Which makes me further wonder if since their software to DAC solution is proprietary if their DAC to scanner solution will end up being proprietary so that if you want the "best scanners in the world" you will have to buy a Pangolin system. I don't have a clue. Just wondering out loud.