Scanning Hardware suggestions

[max]

I am looking at cheap XY scanning hardware at the moment. I certainly would'nt mind building the physical components tho delving into optical feedback circuitry of galvos is something i would happily avoid. What CL galvos are available these days. (its been 7 years since i last played with this stuff). General Scanning and Cambridge are the two i can remember, are there other cheaper manufactures now?

[Pangolin]

Hi Max,

Cambridge is still in the game, although General Scanning (now called GSI Lumonics after a relatively recent merger) is almost not found in lightshow applications.

The best scanners (and the only ones that Pangolin recommends) are the Cambridge model 6215. There are two driver (scanner amp) options offered by Cambridge for this scanner. One driver option is a dual-axis controller (one controller board that controls both X and Y scanners). This is their "673-series" and it offers strong 30K performance. Large signal performance is superior to 6800, and small signal performance is equivalent.

The second driver option offered by Cambridge is the "671-series", which is a single axis driver (you need two drivers -- one for each scanner). This system delivers strong 60K performance. When used with the 671-series driver, you can display the same imagery formerly shown on 6800s, but at twice the speed (i.e. 60K instead of 30K). Alternatively, you can show the same imagery formerly shown on 6800s at twice the angle (i.e. shows that could barely be displayed at 30 degree angle on 6800s without power limiting can be shown at 60 degrees with the 6215 and 671-series drivers).

Of course there are other companies offering drivers for Cambridge scanners, and these are generally less expensive than Cambridge scanners. However, I haven't seen one that I personally liked... For my scanning dollar, I only use Cambridge drivers to control Cambridge scanners.

If you are on a budget, you can consider other scanners. There are some made in Greece, others made in Germany and yet others made in China. But the performance you get depends on the price you pay. "You get what you pay for" as the old saying goes. For truly professional applications, I would only recommend Cambridge scanners and drivers.

Best regards,

William Benner
Pangolin Laser Systems

[Peter Broerse]

Hey Max,

Bill is absolutely right, CT are the greatest for the job, but I would like to add that also the application you need them for strongly dictates the kind of scanners you need. If it is graphics and lots of 'em is what you need, then follow Bill's advise. If you are looking for simple scanners for beamshows then anything doing over 15 K is suitable, especially when on a budget and there are scanners available stating at 450 Euro per set for simple chinese scanners. These do not match anywhere near CT's, but neither does their price ;)

Cheers,

Peter

[Hugo Bunk]

All of the above is true, but I have to add something important and that is how important is redundancy for you? If you are not concerned about a galvo or servo failing at one of your shows then you might try some chinese.
If you can`t permit a set failing then go ONLY for CTI or GS because I have tried all kind of galvo`s and servo`s but 90% broke down after testing them and drive them to their edge of performance but within their given specs and tuning procedures. If CTI or GS is still too much for you costwise you might consider the Terascan from medialas, the performance is not as good but are cheaper and they are still working here.

[pbolger]

Are the Terascan the same as the Ecoscan systems? I'm considering buying a set of Ecoscans and the Mamba Black software and controller, and getting a couple of cheap Chinese solid state modules (I'm in Australia, the Chinese components are around 1/4 of the price of the American or European sourced versions of the same thing).

I'd be very interested in any opinions on the Mamba software. At present I'm more interested in nicely sychronised beamshow sequences than in trying to produce graphics.

[Hugo Bunk]

Hi Pbolger,
I think the best to do is contact Medialas they can answer your questions since I am not using Mambo and Ecoscan.
Be aware that a low price means usually low quality.

[Jian]

Hi Pbolger,
I think the best to do is contact Medialas they can answer your questions since I am not using Mambo and Ecoscan.
Be aware that a low price means usually low quality.

The Terascan of driver make in Germany,the galvo make in China.

>Be aware that a low price means usually low quality
Dragon Tiger scanner(DT-40pro) is low price but high quality.:)

[pbolger]

Unfortunately my budget - around US$2000 - means I'm stuck with cheap. I think it should be possible to build a reasonable projector for around this price though.

At present my plan is:

Mamba Black software + the Medialas interface
Set Ecoscan scanners
2x Chinese Red solid state laser heads, (about 80mw each) with ttl modulation
1x Chinese Green solid state 50mw, with ttl.
Blue to come later...
3x dichroic beam splitters for mixing (including one for blue).
Something to mount it all on.


Am I missing anything?


Jian: I'd be interested in Chinese galvo alternatives, but from what I've seen on Ebay etc they tend to not be that cheap (around AUD$700 for a set of 30k) - and from the pictures often look a bit thrown together. Feel free to convince me otherwise!

[Jian]

Jian: I'd be interested in Chinese galvo alternatives, but from what I've seen on Ebay etc they tend to not be that cheap (around AUD$700 for a set of 30k) - and from the pictures often look a bit thrown together. Feel free to convince me otherwise!

Their scanner warranty seem one year.
DT scanner warranty 2 years.
And more technique you can't seen.
Jian

[pbolger]

I'm getting a 'not found' error with that URL Jian - are you sure it's correct?

[Jian]

:p
I am sorry.The website building,next week or month-end done.
Keep the infor and try again later.:)

[mylaserpage]

Hello Max,

I think this Time there are 3 Kinds of Laserscanner.

For me there are good Working Systems from GSI, Cambridge and some Made-in-Germany like Widemove/M9024.

There also are many Made in China Systems, most of them look like Copys of the CT6800. I buy much of them and I was not satisfied the most Time.

Last, there are Chineese Scanners driven by a Scanneramp which was nearly a Copy of the Cambridge-Amp for the CT6800, like Ecoscan, Terrascan and my K30s.
Its like adding a Ferrari-Engine into a Minicooper sometimes. But doing this you must be carefull !!

In my Amp I measure the Coil-Current from the Galvo. If you try to drive the Chineese Galvos with Current like for the Original Cambridge Galvos, the Driver switches Off an blanked the Lasers so that the Galvos wont be damaged.

Its the same everywhere: You get what you paid !!
Do you need cheap Beamscanners or a really great Graphicsystem ??

Greetings
Guido
www.mylaserpage.de
Germany

[Jian]

Hello Max,
I think > 5 Kinds laserscanner on the world.

Someone say he sell some kinds of scanner. You must be carefull!!
That just resale.Maybe have some pictures on that website,but never
has merchandise on hand.Perhaps no any pictures.
If you offer a good price want to buy a space shuttle,they say:here selling.

Miserable,someone always buy the cheaper and bad quality chinese scanner.
Because they consider the price only,not quality.They never try the high price and good quality chinese scanner.
So they think most chinese scanner are bad quality.

Copy a CD very easy.
But if copy Cambridge-Amp ,is that easy.
No,if copy it very easy,then I think > 50 Kinds laserscanner on the world.
Every laserscanner of manufacturer in possession of the technology by himself.
Like the car,99% cars same configuration.who copy who?

Which sound is fact?
See and listen from the users of their review.
http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=632
Manufacturer and the buy in and sell at a profit?CAREFULL!!!
Greeting
JIAN

[Laser_shows_srl]

I was reading this with interest as we recently did a batch test of many types of scanners from china, eu and america to establish which ones to use in some of our own projectors.

Bill is spot on of course CT are the leaders however in some tests we performed, a very cheap $350 pair of chinese scanners matched older ct6800HP which were kind of the standard a couple of years back but even now would likely cost over $350 for a used set.

We have a lot of pairs of CT 6210 with matched amps from cambridge and so far for most applications these have proved to be the best vs cost.

How do you return faulty scanners to china? As far as I am aware it is difficult to do that for any product including dpss lasers. So 24 months of warranty is not a lot of use if you cant return the product. Forgive me if my information is incorrect.

As an idea, I would suggest to get some cheaper chinese scanners, try them at a low cost risk to see if they do what you need then if not you did'nt spend a lot to find out.

Who remembers the days of torsion bars, very expensive water cooled large frame ion lasers and 380V. Remember when we had to buy a complete computer from IBM or apple. We can all build our own PCs now from snap together components. How long before we can buy laser projector parts from our local computer components store. Not long I guess like everything else!!












You should also take a look at Kvants fiesta also USB.

[Pangolin]

Hi !Laser_shows_srl,

Just one comment.

I am sure that many people use the Cambridge model 6210with matching 671xx amp, but these were not as good as the original 6800 with CB6580 amps.

In 1992, Pangolin's Bill Benner (that's me) worked directly with Cambridge's Bruce Rohr (founder of Cambridge, and president at the time) to make sure the servo component selection used on the CB6580 were truly optimal for lightshow applications. This includes what I call a "plateau of performance for small to medium size steps" -- something that is known and understood by only a small number of people in the entire world...

Cambridge was sold to a large company called Accel around 1996, and Bruce Rohr left Cambridge shortly thereafter. As a partial result, the close communication and working relationship between myself and Cambridge broke down to some extent, until recently.

When the 6210 came out in around 1998, certain sacrifices were made in servo component selection, which enhanced small step performance at the cost of large step performance. From an overall standpoint, the sacrifices were good for industrial applications but not good for lightshow folks. With the breakdown in communications between myself and Cambridge, they did not come to an articulated understanding of why the sacrifices were undesirable until recently. Also, unfortunately to help foster uniformity of component selection, even the 671xx (SMT) amps that were distributed with the model 6800 scanners, had the same sacrifices. So therefore only Cambridge scanners with matched amps distributed from around 1992 to around 1998 had really great performance for lightshow applications. Scanners with matched amps distributed from around 1998 until 2003 had somewhat "sacrificed performance” (at least in my opinion).

When Cambridge was working on the model 6215 scanner, they fortunately reached out to several lightshow folks, including myself, for advice on how to get maximum performance for lightshow applications. This was very fortunate because component values and scanner/amp combinations were tailored as a result of this renewed cooperation. The result is that the 6215 scanner with 673xx (dual axis) amps, or 671xx (single-axis) amps give unmatched and unbeatable performance for lightshow applications. What's more, the 6215 with 673xx amps are actually less expensive than the original 6800 with CB6580 amps that we worked on long ago.

So it becomes a no-brainer. At this point, Pangolin only recommends the Cambridge model 6215 and 673xx amps, or 671xx amps. Although there are less expensive options available, there certainly are not any better options available for those seeking maximum performance or maximum reliability.

And don’t forget, we are swinging around a friken laser beam here!! Why trust your clients to less?

Best regards,

William Benner

[Laseronics-ME]

I agree with Bill that 6215 with 671xx or 673xx are the best. I have a pair of them and they are the best scanners I ever bought, we decided not to buy 6800 anymore and change to 6215 whenever we buy new scanners. I will not get into technical details here but it has by far the widest angle/highest scan speed ratio I ever used and saw. The reliability is amazing, not 1 failure in over 100 shows. I am always a little bit surprised when I talk to laser colleagues about scanners and they still use 6800 and refuse to test or use 6215.
Regards
Yousri

[Pangolin]

Hi Yousri,

It is somewhat of a mystery to many people, even to Cambridge, why people are still using 6800s. The answer is quite simple.

Part of the answer is embedded within my original response, about how once the 6210 came out, certain sacrifices were made. Lightshow people who saw this for the 6210s, knew they didn't want any part of it... BUT, these lightshow people incorrectly blamed the scanner, and not the servo component selection.

The second reason is because of "mechanical" considerations. The 6215s are a bit of a different shape when compared with 6800s. They take up a bit more space, and would require people to re-machine the mounts, especially in "legacy" projectors.

So as a result of these two factors, lightshow people are basically more comfortable with 6800s. They are sort of a "habit"...

Nevertheless, I am glad that people have taken up the 6215 and tried them. It would be great to get comments from Doug McCullough, and Hugo Bunk, both of whom use the 60K "high power amps" with 6215s.

Best regards,

William Benner