Kvant 1W Spectrum RGB projector

[allthatwhichis]

The mystery projector unveiled...

As some of you know I am not the best DIYer on the board and don't get near the satisfaction some other members do by getting their hands dirty doing it themselves... My obsession is with the shows and the music, and of course, the coherent light.

I have decided to give up my builder's badge and go turn key so I can spend some time making shows rather than making a projector, and modifying the projector, and killing a laser/scanner, breaking a mirror... you get the picture. I feel more a designer that an engineer; don't get me wrong, I am proud of the small accomplishments I have made with the various Ghettofabulous builds, I just want to stop worrying about the box and worry about what I can make the box do.

I have sweet talked myself into a advertising/spokesmanship spot for a respectable European laser projector company. I received a slight discount on a turn key system in return for a bit of my time and soul, which I had already been wasting away on the DIY stuff anyway. Now instead of getting the projector ready for a broadcast, I just broadcast.

Introducing the new, smaller Kvant 1W Spectrum RGB projector.



It arrived in a beastly road case with more foam rubber siding in it that there is actual projector.







In the empty space there to the right, but not pictured, was a very nice ILDA cable that I am guessing is 20 meters long but might be longer.



The only problem I am having is I thought it was going to come with all the safety goodies and I could run up to the CDRH and they would give me a varience... My dumbass for hoping... It has a key switch and... that is about it. Other wise it includes X and Y invert switches, dials on the back for manual adjusting of the individual laser powers, and a test output switch that turns all three lasers on full power to test the output I guess...



Here we are with no smoke in the room...



and maybe a puff of smoke in this one...



We measured it at the pre-FLEM gathering at the venue... Well, DZ measured it on his new nifty meter and... after optics, and scanners, and the aperature window (that looks to reflect a good 5% back into the projector... ), it showed 980mW of white, and 250mW of red, 640nm, 350mw of 532 green, and 380mW of 445nm blue. The specs page shows a bit higher on the red and blue, but the layout is a bit different that you or I would choose. Blue is first, with two reds combined with a cube, then the green. The blue goes through 2 dichros and a bounce mirror and the red goes through one dichro and bounce mirror after a mirror and combiner cube. I will open it up for a few up the skirt shots later tonight. Even with those powers the balance is beautiful and the blue... I... I am not sure I can do it justice, so I will have to make a few videos and let it speak for itself. Maybe a few shots of the beams... in air and on the wall.




Did I mention the scanners... They have two options, LM scanners, which I have no idea what they are or who makes them, and the CT6215s, which came in mine.



































Over all I am very happy with my new projector. If you have any questions on the projector or lasershow video requests, shoot me a PM. If I cannot answer it I will definatly refer it to Kvant for an answer and would be happy to make a video of any of the shows I have.

[DZ]

That projector absolutely ROCKeD! I'm glad it arrived in time, thanks for sharing with us FLEM!

[Laser Ben]

WOW! That is an impressive little projector Those are CT6215 scanners?

[gottaluvlasers]

aaron-

that is a BEAUTIFUL projector!! now THAT is what a projector should look like!! LASERWORLD.....TAKE NOTES!!!!

-Marc

[daedal]

I can wholeheartedly agree that the blue cannot be done justice without a first-hand experience. Aaron, that is an amazing little projector you have.

Congrats

--DDL

[mikkojay]

Is that the projector that was making the wicked blue circle in the FLEM youtube video? If there was an available smiley that was drooling, it would be here -->
-Mike

[mixedgas]

THIS THREAD IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT P... Em, hem, a Movie

So we can see the color timing, because everything else looks so pro.....

Steve

[Soulstorm]

And the price??

Looks cool Sexy projector and it looks like it writes on the wall pretty darn good!

[loopee]

WOW, Great colours
Are the CT 6215 scanners the high power versions or just the stock ones?
Interesting that the green now looks to be the fattest, obviously this is due to the red and blue now being Direct Inject diodes

Looking forward to seeing photos of the insides

[allthatwhichis]

Thank you everyone; it is amazing what you can do with a loan on a 401k that was heading south... The 3.2% I am going to pay, from what I understand is to myself, is much bettter than the 32% it lost the past year.

Yes, they are 6215s with the 40k amps. I am running a nice angle at 30K with a bit of room to spare.

Yes, Laserworld, look... I beleive this laser was measured at around 350mW, after the scanners and aperature window glass... and it is labled as 300mW...



Here is a slightly closer angle... Just for Peter...



Yes this was the one showing the blue tunnel. Just an abstract circle at "60.00".

... Em, hem, a Movie.....

Steve

Steve, anything for you... what would you like the movie to be of? I have some videos of DZ's shows from Mr. Dunn that I am capturing in the other room. Might be a few days before they are up. If you have something specific in mind I can take a smaller video that I can get on the FTP sooner. No you tube or google video as it will compress it to shit.

As for the cost, a bit of my future time, more of a reason to hit as many LEMs as I can, a pinch of my soul (have yet to receive a Kvant t-shirt..., there were none available to send me for FLEM), and about half what the list price is, plus about $500 in shipping. It was shipped on 03/18 and arived on 03/20... and weighed 70+lbs. in the flight case.

The insides...











You'll have to find the album for the rest. I am not sure I want the "jewels" on the front page and all... Intimacy on that level is best left for the profile. It is the perfect build if you like em slim and trim.

[mophead]

I agree. That box kicks some major ass.

Kickass white.
Rocksolid scanning.
Small size.
Great layout inside--eventhough it seems backwards, color speaks for itsself.

[cruch]

I really want one of those... But the price is skyhigh for my soul. Pictures is killing me, so beautyfull coherent light.

[pelosh]

I am glad to hear you are satisfied!

I have tha same one now as well, except it is 1.4W RGB and YES! its great.

2 days ago I did the little show locally...laptop with .NET in backpack and laser in small aluminium suitcase .

If you guys consider what is inside, amount of engineering and final size, weight and performance it is actually not THAT expensive.
Buying all those quality components separately, having such a nice casing made and amount of time of assembly it would take you (while you can be washing dishes in local pub and make money) + guarantee and it's almost equal to its price.

Right, so... all orders here please ...I'll make you good offer!

[ledfreak3d]

looks a lot beter then that laserworld crap
the colors are amazing

[Steve Milani]

WOW!
Great great great purchase Aaron!!!!!
Alignment, white balance, scanners, beam specs, colors....are all EXCELLENT!
445nm blue is really stunning. After seen your colors I really start to think to do something for to obtain a deeper blue-violet on my projectors...

Also projector's case has small dimensions and seems to be solid like Fort Knox.

You're a lucky man (and i am little jealous....)

Congrats to you and Kvant too.

[White-Light]

I can give you a movie from UKLEM of Pelosh's 1.4 and 3 W spectrums. They're the ones in the centre of the picture (a little overpowered by the overhead greens unfortunately).

Only thing I noticed at UKLEM was they seemed very violet, I actually though they were running 405nm until someone told me what they were. Colours to me were a little disappointing as a result as the oranges and reds looked pale and the blues violet but that might have just been the patterns Pelosh was running in the software. Its too easy to blame the projector when the software's actually controlling the colour mix!

To my eyes, Jem had the best colour balance in the room which surprised me as his red was 660nm and seemed very visible (I expected it to be much dimmer).

No faulting the Kvant build or case quality though, top notch and a lovely small size on the 1.4W!

Video of the Spectrums are here:

http://vimeo.com/3830754

(apologies for the poorish quality was from a compact camera)

[SideFX]

The mystery projector unveiled...

As some of you know I am not the best DIYer on the board and don't get near the satisfaction some other members do by getting their hands dirty doing it themselves... My obsession is with the shows and the music, and of course, the coherent light.

We're definitely on the same wavelength on this!
I spent hours aligning the red and green in my DIY RGY before a gig last weekend.. when the show started i noticed they were again unaligned as hell ..
I'd rather use my energy for show and making the crowd go wild

I'm saving for a complete prebuilt RGB solution.. this RGB-1 is on the top of my wishlist altough the RG-600 would also be nice to get me started..

What amazing pics!! I knew KVANT delivered nice stuff.. but this beam.. with the bright, thin red and deep blue..

A couple of questions though:
- Do you think it is possible to mount a FB3 controller on the inside of the case?
- Is there something like scanner-safety in there?

[Jem]

To my eyes, Jem had the best colour balance in the room which surprised me as his red was 660nm and seemed very visible (I expected it to be much dimmer).

Thanks Al, you say the nicest things

However, I think the colour balance in mine is more a case of good luck rather than good management

For information I have in my projector...

Dual Maxyzmodule at ~450mW of 659nm Red

Laserwave 473nm Blue at ~200mW

Laserwave Green 532nm at ~350mW

This is of course a pretty poor balance on its own... However... Add in one QM2000.Net and some Pangolin software to balance all those colours and you end up with a lovely white

Quite what the actual balanced white output is on my projector I don't know as I don't have a thermopile head for my meter. I suspect it's probably around 600mW (ish) as a best guesstimate.

Cheers

Jem

[pelosh]

Hi all,

reason for that was that I have only 1 QM card and 2 projectors so for UKLEM I was using signal splitter and therefore the colour balance could not be matched on both projectors. So I did not bother to adjust the colours at all...as you now it was bit rushy day for me.

But NEXT TIME !!!*@!

I can give you a movie from UKLEM of Pelosh's 1.4 and 3 W spectrums. They're the ones in the centre of the picture (a little overpowered by the overhead greens unfortunately).

Only thing I noticed at UKLEM was they seemed very violet, I actually though they were running 405nm until someone told me what they were. Colours to me were a little disappointing as a result as the oranges and reds looked pale and the blues violet but that might have just been the patterns Pelosh was running in the software. Its too easy to blame the projector when the software's actually controlling the colour mix!

To my eyes, Jem had the best colour balance in the room which surprised me as his red was 660nm and seemed very visible (I expected it to be much dimmer).

No faulting the Kvant build or case quality though, top notch and a lovely small size on the 1.4W!

Video of the Spectrums are here:

http://vimeo.com/0701734

(apologies for the poorish quality was from a compact camera)

----------tipello.net - i am not referring you, i just DO recommend it.

[pelosh]

Everything is pretty squoshed in it so I don't think so.
Front window metal-sliding (up&down) cover is simple hardware safety solution...you can limit the horizontal position of beams going out of the projector

A couple of questions though:
- Do you think it is possible to mount a FB3 controller on the inside of the case?
- Is there something like scanner-safety in there?

----------tipello.net - i am not referring you, i just DO recommend it.

[sbk]

Very nice projector Allthat! CT scanners... 445nm blue... now it's me that is envious of your projector

And how's the 500mW 445nm visibility comparing to your old 473+405nm config?

[mikkojay]

Everything is pretty squoshed in it so I don't think so.
Front window metal-sliding (up&down) cover is simple hardware safety solution...you can limit the horizontal position of beams going out of the projector

I liked the design of the sliding window even before you mentioned this- what a great idea!
Thanks, Mike

[Laser Ben]

That is a pretty good design, will manually keep the beam from going into the audience. I would prefer something that would fail upwards and keep the beam from going into the audience rather then if this slipped it would unblock the beam.

[trwalters001]

I would prefer something that would fail upwards

Maybe something spring loaded (pushing up?)

[allthatwhichis]

Thanks again y'all.

I am totally hooked on the 445 blue, but I could see adding a bit of green to one of the blue shades for a brighter blue. The lower wavelength just adds more to the pallete in my opinion.

Actually the thumb screws are nice and secure. I do not see the window cover slipping off. I would not call this a safety feature, but Martin is right; you can use it as a mask if the projector is located above the audience.

It still needs all the safety hardware, interlock, shutter, kill switch, non-removable key, and emission lights... and someone else needs to install it; cause I ain't getting a tool near this beauty. A varience is not top on my list, but would be very nice.