Continued from our post on Blue and Red KVANT Lasers...
We also needed some scanners for our quick-build R/B projector. Initially, I just wanted some 30K scanners primarily for beam effects. Talked to Marc at CT Lasers who advised me he had a pair of the Eye-Magic EMS-7000 scanners in route and we could get these much quicker. I was a little hesitant at first as we have always used CT scanners in all of our projectors. In fact, I still have a pair of 6800 HP scanners with the original (big) amps that are still working from the late 1990's.
Again, CT Lasers and the miracle of FedEx Saturday delivery came through again.
Now about those Eye-Magic Scanners.
OK, two words: "Also Incredible." I had wired-up these scanners to the power supplies and cautiously thrown the switch. Amazing, everything worked perfectly on the first try. No smoke, just great scanning.
Yes, I tried running these at 60K and the ILDA test pattern does achieve this for small angles. For the angles we used during this show (a 25 x 50 foot screen), I had cut back to about 40K as these scanners had the bigger mirrors. The ILDA 30K test pattern still looked great, although the central blue circle becomes elliptical and distorts. However, it didn't matter as the images held together very well.
Heat from the scanners? I didn't notice any appreciable heat other than slightly warm to the touch on the scanner block after about 15 minutes. Of course, everything was bolted onto a large Aluminum plate and the projector box had two ventilation fans. I may just give up on CT scanners in the future; especially for the mirror sizes that I can run on the EyeMagic scanners. These larger beams are ideal for the higher power KVANT lasers. I also very much liked the size of the scanner amps. These took up minimal room in the projector housing.
The new scanner block. This is another "built-like-a-tank" block that is great for good heat dissipation when bolted onto the base plate. Here, someone was thinking.
The height of scanner mounting in the block actually matched the beam height of the KVANT lasers! I had other scanners with other lasers and then had to shim something in order to match beam heights. The EMS-7000 scanners were basically plug and play. Save me lots of time.
Interesting note: Some of the images we used for a show were complex and had a large number of points. Therefore, we split the images into separate frames and spread the scanner load among two projectors. This worked great considering an Eye-Magic scanner was paired with a CT 6210 scanner. The audience never knew there were two separate images created from two separate projectors.
Or course, if one scanner or laser failed the resultant image would be flawed but everything worked as planned. We also included Pangolin's Showtime frame masking effects and found out it handles masking across multiple independent laser projectors and zones flawlessly.
And speaking of Pangolin in my rush needs, they also came through with great customer support. We had needed some additional hardware and a software plug-in. Again, overnight delivery from Pangolin and we are in business. In fact we had one person doing Showtime programming for a laser projector that didn't even exist as I was still building it. After it was built, we just ran the Pangolin Color Palette setup and set the scanner and projection zones. Couldn't have been more simple.
Again, I am highly impressed with the EMS-7000 scanners. Of course, time will tell if I can get 15+ years out of a scanner set.