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I did, and yes the EMS-8000 was quite hot, the Compact was not really "ice cold" but for sure a lot cooler in comparison, and the EMS-5100 was surprisingly cold too, despite the integrated amp.
But as the scanners was not all playing the same show, or at a lower angle (EMS-5100), and there was also bidirectional temperature sharing between all amp and scanners being all on the same baseplate, it was not a perfect side-by-side comparison...
My bad about CT6215, I'm not a huge expert in CT scanners.
Magus,
I appreciate your comments, and the possibility to debate this in public. Individual users can certainly have opinions about this or that, but these opinions would be somewhat in a vacuum.
Just tonight, one of our German clients believed we did something foolish with the Compact 506 design, but once I explained it to him with the total context (how machined parts always have some tolerance, and how doing things our way gives great performance regardless of tolerance), he was then able to understand the situation, and agreed with our approach.
In the case of scanners, I already mentioned in another thread, and also in my video, that almost all scanners that you can lay your hands on these days (with very very very few exceptions) are made in exactly the same way as the Cambridge model 6800, which is actually based on a design invented nearly 40 years ago. All of these scanners have substantially the same diameter wire, same number of turns on the coil, same type of magnet, etc. So they all work the same.
In a vacuum, one company claiming to produce scanners that can go faster than 30K, or claiming to produce scanners that can go wider angle and still do it at 30K sounds great on paper -- until you learn the physics of all of this stuff, and find out that when everyone is doing things in exactly the same way, then everyone will REALLY get the same kind of performance, and have the same kind of problems at the same point. I know this very well, because I fully understand the physics of all of this (and license some of my patents to others for production)! Again, if you want more info about all of this, watch my video.
So, in a vacuum, all of this sounds great, and it sounds like Pangolin would really be doing something unfair. But in reality (the reality that Pangolin has faced since we started putting out our LD2000 system in 1999), we receive emails and complaints from clients that -- because we allowed the scan rate of our LD2000 system to go faster, their scanners burned up. And in reality -- we haven't received a single email, phone call, or complaint about QS burning up people's scanners, and QS has been on the market for more than five years and sold tens of thousands of copies!
Magus, if you could be relied upon as an "insurance company" for everyone's scanners, and if anyone burned up their scanners if we could simply send them to you to pay to have their scanners repaired, that would be one thing. So we'd be able to simplify our lives -- simply allow QS to go faster than 30K under all circumstances, and send anyone with burned scanners to you for a refund. But we really can't do that...
I will remind you of the physics -- also presented in my video. Increasing the scan speed to only 40K -- while changing nothing else -- increases the heat inside the scanner by a factor of (40 / 30) ^ 4 = 3.16 times the heat! ScannerMAX scanners do not have this problem because a) our coil resistance is significantly lower; b) our torque-to-inertia ratio is significantly higher.
It's not just the Big Bad Bill Benner striking again, or Big Bad Pangolin. It's that when stuff goes wrong, people come crying to us, and we can't simply send them to you and say "Well, Magus told us to do it, and he'll gladly pay to replace your scanners".
I hope you understand that in fact, for most people, reliability is very important!
Just one more point. You wrote:
From where are you getting your statistics? What's your background? How can you make these claims?
I'm just not so sure you can back this up with "thousands of people" operating scanners that are nothing more than copies of the original 6800, at speeds faster than 30K. I'm also comfortable saying that you'd be hard pressed to find "thousands of people" using software other than Pangolin, because we just purchased the company with the second-largest user base, and they had only 3500 clients!
Bill
Last edited by Pangolin; 03-16-2014 at 13:48.
Actually the heat you felt on Compact was heat generated by the baseplate, on which amps and other scanners were mounted.
Correct!
Even my own video -- comparing Compact 506 to DT-40 was flawed. Even though Compact 506 was sitting on the stack of circuit boards, the base plate of my projector was already 35C. The scanners could not be much cooler than the base plate... In the future I'll make another video showing my scanners with long cables to the amp, so there won't be any "coupling" between the lasers, amps, and scanners.
Bill
By the way, I'm sure people will "game the system" by informing QS that they have ScannerMAX scanners and using it on conventional galvos. Such people will take their chances... So we'll put up a warning in any event...
Bill
At the end of the day, I see nothing wrong with Pangolin limiting scanner speed at their discretion. The fact that they are willing to lift this limitation on their entry level product should be hailed as a victory, not condemned as "unfair". Frankly, I think faster scan speeds should be limited to their more professional products, but that's just me.
But it looks like they aren't using the "Big boy" amps which would mean there only running at 30K (unless the amps were HB's own amps) so possibly not as warm as they could getCT6215 (and they were 6215 not 6210) were moderately warm
Seem strange not to have them doing 60K next to the EMS and Scannermax scanners (something I'd love to see), but I also think it's strange not having all the scanners displaying content from a single source for true comparison (and at a greater distance)
RTI Piko RGB 4 ProjectorCT6215 Scanners & CT 671 Amps; CT6210 & Medialas Microamps.RGBLaser Systems 6000mW RGB Module - 638nm/445nm/532LD2000 Pro + QM2000.net + BeyondEtherdream + LSX
Old Projector Build
Videos at http://au.youtube.com/user/loopee2
I would like to interject my observation of the EMS 8000 scanners I own. At 41K and approx 30 degree scan angle the test patterns were pretty good, but the heat generated by the motors, and I am only mentioning the heat here, was moderate ie close to body temperature with the mount attached to a thick base plate. But, the amps were VERY hot and within 15-20 seconds the transistors were too hot to touch. I'm not sure if this is a serious performance limitation, however the amps may have contributed much of the heat to the common base plate in the Prolight set up.
Just for the info, in the HB-Laser scanner bench at Prolight, our EMS-8000 with 8.6mm wide mirrors were running at 60K, while the 506 and the other smaller scanners with normal mirrors were running at 30K. Yet in the above posts, our scanners are presented as ''red hot'' when others as ''ice cold'' as if they were doing the same thing.....
The conclusions are yours.
As for the ''new trend'' of 90K, our EMS-8000 with 3.8mm aperture mirrors (comparable with the Saturn 1) will do a nice 90K @4 deg, a little more than the saturn 1. But then again, since when those small angles became important and are called ''real 90K'' ?
Do not be fooled by the ''trick'' of playing many shows, one next to the other, at high speed. The widths of the shows DO NOT ADD UP. If each show is played at (for example) 10 degrees, then the whole projection is still in 10 degrees, even if the shows are ''spread'' around the projection area. We are happy to explain this if you do not understand it.
All the best to all,
Tom Kamaras
EyeMagic