DLP as a scanne?

[planters]

Looking at a couple of former TV projectors, harvested for their diodes, I was wondering if there is a place for the DLP chip and a collimnated or more likely focused laser beam. It is amazing technology that just ends up being disposed of. Can the micro mirrors be driven with the associated electronics(free) to various angles as opposed to off/on, or in other words, used vs dumped? What power levels can they handle? The throughput might be incredible even at 30/60 Hz fixed because there are nearly 1 million parallel channels. At first I assumed the divergence of 10um micro mirrors would be terrible, but at this scale the ////// may actually phase. I don't know. What about upgrading the supplied optics and using lasers rather than non-coherent light to add a video component to a show?
Has anyone thought about this or tried to test these things with this in mind?

[mixedgas]

The mirrors are first surface aluminum without a overcoat and are power limited. The TI DLP site has datasheets. If you look at the UV DLP datasheets, a modest power density is specified.
Its not a big number.

Steve

[planters]

Thanks,
Did look thru this and there is A LOT of information. I mean A LOT! Some of it looks like FORTRAN. Anyway, the average or continuous max. power density is 25W/cm2. and the chips do in fact operate at a continuous range of angles (depending on the drive electronics) up to +/- 12 degrees-mechanical.

Now, I'm not trying to get into a huge development project (these things are in fact being used for structured light and pattern generation according to the TI website), but if we expose the chip from harvested projectors and illuminate it with a few Ws of laser light then drive the electronics with the video signal from say the monitor output from some program like, lets say Pangolin, what happens?

[dnar]

An interesting proposition...

Watching on in interest.

[greenalien]

As Steve says, the power density that DLP chips will handle is small - I seem to recall several instances over the last few years where VJs have complained that their video projectors have had the DLP arrays damaged by incoming laserbeams, so you'd presumably need to diffuse/diverge your beam a lot before it hit the DLP array, then focus it afterwards.

[planters]

Yes. According to the graphs on the TI site because these things operate at the micro scale it is clear that the power density can not exceed 25W/cm2 FOR EACH MIRROR and so the laser can not focus on the array. The laser also can not operate pulsed with a peak power over 25W. But if a 1cm2 chip was illuminated by a collimnated 1cm dia. beam of less than this limit then do you need to focus post chip? Do you know how these video projectors interfaced with the beams? Was it by design as I am suggesting or by the wash of a stray beam?

[opcom]

Does the datasheet say the type of window on the chip or its transmission wavelengths?

[planters]

As I savaged my projectors, I had to research generic TI DLPs, and from a first glance I do not think a window is supplied from the manufacturer ( I will continue to look thru the site and maybe even resort to a call). I can't check if the harvested projectors incorporated any window, but there should be a lot of these sitting around. I think this idea, if it has any merit, depends on the easily available harvested projectors. Any custom or low volume test bed will be way too expensive even if they work.