good source for galvos?

looking for a place to buy a galvo set at a decent price. Looking for a "plug & play" set, any ideas?

Spacelas on ebay is selling the most affordable sets, but they're not top shelf quality or anything. In my experience they are very good for the price, but there are better sets out there. Galvo(scanning) system ILDA20K max35k for Laser systems - eBay (item 290475009457 end time Oct-12-10 18:16:26 PDT)

I saw some good ones awhile ago for under 1k but forgot where they were. Honestly I HATE ebay. Too many bad experiences and sooo much cobbed up junk on there, I have learned to just spend the money, buy new and go with a reputable company.
I have been kicking around the idea of maybe buying a decent Laserworld projector already built and then upgrading the laser modules as I see fit.

What's your price range? If you're looking for <$1,000 CT Lasers has DT 40 Pro Wides for $550 a set.

Prototype said:

What's your price range? If you're looking for <$1,000 CT Lasers has DT 40 Pro Wides for $550 a set.

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^^^^^^^^My Thoughts Exactly^^^^^^^^

The DT 40 Pro Wides are great. Best set I ever owned.

DTs are great, no doubt there. I thoroghly enjoy my DT-25s.. I will say that in terms of output, my DT-25s, my Scanpro 20s AND my Spacelas 20k sets ALL perform identically.. Actually I've already had one galvo fail from one set of DT-25s.. (they were bought used) and I'm still at zero failures with any of the scanpros and Spacelas sets, used or new.

To me, Chinese galvos are Chinese galvos.. The only things that are really better enough to worry about are galvos from Cambridge, General Scanning or EyeMagic.. but all three of those are in a whole different price range.

Gappa said:

I saw some good ones awhile ago for under 1k but forgot where they were. Honestly I HATE ebay. Too many bad experiences and sooo much cobbed up junk on there, I have learned to just spend the money, buy new and go with a reputable company.
I have been kicking around the idea of maybe buying a decent Laserworld projector already built and then upgrading the laser modules as I see fit.

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Laserworld and reputable DO NOT go together. Do yourself a favor and join photonlexicon.com.. then search that forum for info on Laserworld. You're far better off buying a galvo set from (name your ebay dealer) than you are buying Laserworld.. unless of course you enjoy spending big money and getting squat in return. Just be careful!!

You can also buy almost any galvo set you can find on ebay directly from their manufacturers (although I'm kind of curious why ebay=used.. there is TONS of brand new stuff on ebay of all kinds):

Scanpros: http://www.sonima.com.cn/

Spacelas: http://www.spacelas.com/

DT: http://www.dtelectronic.cn/about.asp?id=1

I just bought a set of DT-40 wides still waiting on them to get here...

is there that big of a difference between 30,40 or 60kpps? is it worth going 60k?

That depends on what you're wanting to do..

Aerial beam shows tend to look better at slower speeds (12-15k), while graphics benefit from the fastest speed you can afford.

Gappa said:

is there that big of a difference between 30,40 or 60kpps? is it worth going 60k?

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Going to 60k will cost a lot more than $1,000. You're looking at ~$2,200 for a set of 60k Cambridge galvos from one stop laser shop.

so there is a huge difference between those spacelas $112 units and the 60k cambridge $2k units.
So by going high $ you start getting into actual picture projection

You can do picture projection with ~30k, it's just the image gets better the higher you go, member Things has a set of DT-25s and they can do some rather nice images.

Gappa said:

so there is a huge difference between those spacelas $112 units and the 60k cambridge $2k units.
So by going high $ you start getting into actual picture projection

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You can do decent images with with 30k galvos as proto says.. if you can afford faster and you really want super-smooth motion on even the most complex images, go faster. Also, there is a huge difference between any Chinese scanner and a set of Cambridge scanners, but Chinese scanners are still pretty decent these days as long as you stick with well-known manufacturers. They're really not bad considering they usually cost a small fraction of the mainstream high end cost.

well for a first time build it would make sense to go cheaper on the scanners and get a good controller.

can't argue with that logic..

Gappa said:

well for a first time build it would make sense to go cheaper on the scanners and get a good controller.

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This is what I did. I got the Spacelas PT-30K scanners and was looking at the soundcard dac route but ended up going with the Flashback3/Quickshow set up. One deciding factor was I didn't want to turn the controller into a project itself. It was enough of a project drilling and tapping the baseplate, dealing with broken bits and taps, wiring, layout....

I just got it running the other day and the scanners were pretty dead on right out of the box. I'm pretty impressed with the controller too! Quickshow is taking some practice/learning but I've downloaded a few of the shows available and have been able to run them with sound. I'm very happy with the FB3 and QS.

That said, it's all I've used, same with the scanners, so I can't make any comparison. For what I'm doing, and for my first scanner, I'm happy with it so far.