200mW laser show, twin scanner

Hi corim. The spiro scanner cost me virtually nothing. It was ripped out of a simple 5mW laser show ($20 on Ebay) I added a pot to each motor to adjust the speed and change the patterns, and wired it all to my dc power supply. Laser power is one of mr. Lanlings Labbys.

Things: sorry if my post was misleading, the total power is 200mW of the 2 scanners combined. The labby is labled <50mW , but its brightness suggests it is pushing out more than that. I can confirm this when Merl comes to visit with his lasercheck.

Here is a picture of the spiro scanner.

Jase.

here is a nice tunnel with just one motor spinning.

Jase

How are you producing such great results all built ones liek this I see only project lines on the wall, you have some great stuff here. Especially the tunnel and the spiral type thing on the last one.

hey jase, if you have someone with a power meter, why don't you measure you RGY scanners power?

Hi things , Merl will be coming to visit soon, so we will try and get some readings off the RGY. I think Hemlock Mike has tried too, but as the lasers switch on and off so fast, it is quite difficult to measure.

I recall him saying that he measured 60mW peak from both the red and green (we will see)

Corim: It really is trial and error my friend. Dont be afraid to experiment. I can assure you I have more rubbish photos than good ones. Have a go at making the scanner that Paper did.

That should give you some great spiro shots, and if you use just 1 mirror / motor, you will produce some great tunnels.

With regards to safety, scanned beams are a lot safer than static beams, as the energy is never concentrated to a single point. The further away you are from the scanner, the safer it becomes, as the scanning angle at a distance , makes the beam travel faster relative to the viewer. That said, you still need to use common sense and take great care.

Jase

Hi Jase what was the make/model of the projector that you got from ebay (the £40 one you stripped...this page) It looks like it has some really handy parts in it

Regards rog8811

This is the host, gone up a little in price, but some nice parts to harvest in there. It has a pattern display chip as well as sound mode.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RED-HOT-LASER...ryZ14954QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

well well, I looked at that before I started building my own...... it is quite well made for the price........It may have to wait a while though I have so overspent this month on laser related items......

Regards rog8811

Corim --

When the beam is moving at that speed, it probably won't do damage but why look into the laser??? Look at the picture !!!

I haven't built one yet but it appears to need only two small motors with mirrors set at slight odd angles. Info all over the place here. You can control it somewhat be changing the speed on one or both motors.
See if you can find a couple old cell phones - Harvest the vib motors out and use current controls to adjust the speed.

Mike

Jase --

I'm working with "Things" on the DMX system. No kidding, the scanner is insane and measureing it while projecting is useless. I believe it has TTL switching and it never puts out a steady beam -- not even inside before the dichro as near as I can tell. There are what appear to be power control pots on the board but I'm not touching them until I have readings ....... GIVE ME THE CONTROL :

Mike

yea the only way to get accurate control is DMX, but untill you can control DMX, it's very hard to get readings! if i had a power meter, i could measure the output power, but there is one problem.... i don't have a power meter :-/. maybe we could have an australian meet and someone could bring a power meter ;D also remember that the output power might be lower since the lasers are on and off very fast, and they don't have very long to warm up

Things --

Once I can tell mine to put out a solid line of red or a star -- I will be able to measure current and power at the output window of each laser.  I will also be able to tell if it's pulsed and adjust accordingly.

Mike

I ordered my DMX Pro tonight.

thats great mike! make sure you post the results! the best pattern for testing would be a horizontal line, scanning full speed, and the pattern as small as it can go! i have found(by eye) that the laser is duller when running full speed. but i guess thats just because the laser is slower. for the testing, i recommend that JS DMX software, as it is very stable! there is one thing i want you to try for me please? when i'm running the laser on DMX... say i'm doing a horizontal line, but it's on the floor. so i move it up using th Y position slider, but the only thing is, the horizontal "jumps" down to where it started? another example is this when i'm getting the laser to do "welcome", there are stray beams shooting downwards? here's a vid: http://youtube.com/watch?v=UjPTIPm0zHo
it does this with some other static patterns, but i think it's just the scanner? when you get your DMX Pro, can you tell me if this happens to you, then i can try find out what it is.
thanks!