Scannermax 506s

[Pangolin]

Hi guys,

WHAT ? UNBELIEVABLE ! SIMPLY UNBELIEVABLE .....

Tom, just one point. You've been producing scanners for around ten years not using a set-back, with the same mirrors for X and Y, and with your recent EMS scanners using a "unitized" mount just like everyone else in the world. Then, after you and I exchanged perhaps a dozen emails, where I sent you screen shots from Solid Works and proved that your mirrors would not do what you said they do, THEN AND ONLY THEN do you adopt what we're doing insomuch as using a set-back, breaking the mount into two pieces, and using separate mirrors for X and Y.

If it wasn't all of the debates that went back and forth through email between you and I, exactly what was it that motivated you to switch from how you had been doing it for the past ten years to how you're doing it now?

Really, Edison? Transparency? Do something for me. Go to Pangolin's Scannermax site and from the site, in full public view, look at the specs for the new scanners. After that, go to the EMS website and do the same...... oh wait, you need to request information from EMS.

Right on!

Below is a list of why Pangolin is moving towards the scanner market

Regarding what Edison wrote and our motivation, I'm afraid that Edison doesn't know the whole history of how we've been involved with scanners.

Edison if you look in the patent database, you'll find around 20 patents issued to me personally (not Pangolin). You'll notice that most of those 20 are related to optical scanners and scan projection apparatus. You'll notice that some of these patents date back nearly 20 years. And if you really study scanner company history, you'll come to understand that in fact, some of the scanner manufacturers have licensed my designs for their own scanners. If you look in the "laser resources" section of our web site, and also in other sections, you'll find articles that I wrote about scanners and scanning. If you were to query the employees who work at scanner companies (almost all of them), you'd learn that in fact, I served as a consultant to them. And lastly (or firstly) my College Theses was on getting open-loop galvanometers to perform just as well as closed-loop galvanometers (a task that succeeded, and later became a first-place ILDA-award-winning product). So I've been involved with laser scanners and scanning for more than 25 years!

Pangolin didn't decide to enter the market because of any of the reasons you wrote (reasons I found amusing by the way). We decided to enter the market because -- up until the release of our Saturn scanners, the world did not have a scanner that could scan fast and wide and do so without building up heat.

Our Saturn 5 is nearly 3 times as efficient (from a heat standpoint) as it's closest competitor in the world, which itself is around 2.5 times as efficient as your average 6800-style scanner. There are certain applications, such as Confocal Microsopy and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) which are ABSOLUTELY CHEWING UP AND SPITTING OUT the highest performance US-made galvanometers right now, because they could not get better performance. Bottom line: there were certain applications in scanning which were literally impossible before our Saturn series came out.

So yes, for those people involved in medical imaging, we're making the world a better place! And for someone needing the pathology on a biological sample, if our scanners help in a medical diagnosis, you'd better believe that we're making the world a better place for those patients!

These same scanners can help laser lightshow people as well. Once you watch my video and understand rotor dynamics (something literally nobody else in optical scanning is talking about) and understand how heat in a galvanometer can be reduced or eliminated, you'll come to understand how our Stronger + Cooler = Faster formula can really help people.

As for China, the plan to make a low-cost scanner wasn't even on our roadmap until a client came to us and asked us to make a cheap scanner for them, promising to order more than one million of them if we did... Only then did we examine how it could be done (and actually did it). Now we're offering that same technology (along with the cost benefits that result in those economies of scale) to everyone.

Now, does this mean we do it all for free? Of course not! But we do what we can and help out, and to make things affordable to people all over the world.

And to PL members who don't have lavish financial means but do have a passion and can help out in other areas, we make special deals (as mentioned earlier in this thread).

Best regards,

William Benner

PS: There are several people in the laser show business (manufacturers) who are driving Lamborghini! I'm not kidding about that! As for myself, I drive a 6-year-old Toyota Highlander Hybrid that I'm quite happy with. I'm actually proud to say that all of the folks who work at Pangolin drive a car newer than I do. I hope it's clear that money isn't the most important thing to me...

[dnar]

I have been thinking this non-orthagonal approach in my minds idle process, and concluded that it would also help to place 2 mirrors between the scanners and beam source to first lift the beam height above the mirror level and the second to steer the beam down towards the first scanner mirror, at say 7 degrees. Requires less adjustment on the first scanner mirror. Thoughts?

[Pangolin]

I can't claim that level of understanding..

What you've demonstrated is persistence and the pursuit of knowledge you didn't have to do things in a better way. You've demonstrated that any "understanding you can't claim" would eventually be acquired. Planters has demonstrated the same thing in his videos.

That other thread, with the lines appearing curved when not horizontal or vertical, was a different thing.. I narrowed it down to WideMove scanners not starting up from a resting moment early enough. I haven't got them anymore, but I did look inside them briefly. There was no debris, delamination, that I was warned may exist, so I never figured out a cause. It was mechanical though, they'd track cleanly to rest, they just didn't start moving again until the force moving them reached a significant threshold. This would have shown up regardless of beam path angles. Given that Steve said the 506 has high linearity and repeatability, it looks like they will solve this.

AHA, I think I know what's going on. If the WideMoves used sintered bearings instead of ball bearings (which many scanners did for years, including some EMS scanners), these bearings only work well with continuous rotation. The "starting torque" on them is quite high, and there is friction and stiction involved. The result is a lot of hysteresis. For me the tell-tale is the text in the ILDA test pattern. If the text looks blocky or kind of mushes into single lines (instead of clearly distinguishable text), then this is a clear sign of excessive friction in the bearings.

I have been thinking this non-orthagonal approach in my minds idle process, and concluded that it would also help to place 2 mirrors between the scanners and beam source to first lift the beam height above the mirror level and the second to steer the beam down towards the first scanner mirror, at say 7 degrees. Requires less adjustment on the first scanner mirror. Thoughts?

Yes, if I understand properly (again, the problem with words and not pictures), this is exactly what The Doctor was talking about. This will allow you to reduce the size of the X mirror, but nothing more. Normally the X mirror already has less inertia than the Y mirror, so it's not deemed beneficial. But for applications such as raster, where you're really trying to optimize the inertia of the X mirror, this can help. (But actually for those applications, there are other ways to arrange the X and Y scanners to further reduce the size of the X mirror.)

Bill

[The_Doctor]

What you've demonstrated is persistence and the pursuit of knowledge you didn't have to do things in a better way. You've demonstrated that any "understanding you can't claim" would eventually be acquired. Planters has demonstrated the same thing in his videos.

Ok. True. I think I'm torn between various motives though. Phase modulation synthesisers AND lasers is a two-man lifetime work. I doubt I could ever do both well. I'm mainly here right now because after intensive work on the code this time last year I have real difficulty facing putting myself through it again right now.. Besides this way I get interesting people to talk to. I'm not sure I could hack it if it became my work, So no consultancy for me... Seriously, I'd need a lot more for that than I actually have.

AHA, I think I know what's going on. If the WideMoves used sintered bearings instead of ball bearings (which many scanners did for years, including some EMS scanners), these bearings only work well with continuous rotation. The "starting torque" on them is quite high, and there is friction and stiction involved. The result is a lot of hysteresis. For me the tell-tale is the text in the ILDA test pattern. If the text looks blocky or kind of mushes into single lines (instead of clearly distinguishable text), then this is a clear sign of excessive friction in the bearings.

I started out calling it hysteresis but with caution because hysteresis usually shows up equally both ways, but this was only on starting. But momentum in moving scanners can account for much of that difference. The strong magnetic field masked the friction and viscosity of lubricant I think. To avoid risk of harm I used the back of my fingernail on the unpowered scanners to test how motion felt, but I could never be entirely sure why they felt slightly more damped than I expected. The yeilding, damping quality of keratin in a fingernail, plus the friction, and viscosity, just made it too difficult for me to do much more than guess! What tipped me off eventually was a late realisation of the obvious: my test circles were drawn clockwise, so it was clear that it was only when starting from a standstill that the business occured. I'd been too busy looking at the straight-sided polygon rotation to see this, and because no-one who saw my test images and video ever knew which way the fast scan was drawing, they couldn't have told me because I never gave them enough data, and hadn't realised.

I haven't got them now but I'm fairly sure that WideMoves used sintered bearings. The ceramic ball bearings Steve mentioned for the 506 was the one thing that really made me pay attention, because that looked like a singular and effective elimination of the problems I had. I'm determined that I will only buy scanners again if they do not do that, because once in a lifetime is more than enough. They cost me 800 quid, way too much to lose the same way twice.

Yes, if I understand properly (again, the problem with words and not pictures), this is exactly what The Doctor was talking about. This will allow you to reduce the size of the X mirror, but nothing more. Normally the X mirror already has less inertia than the Y mirror, so it's not deemed beneficial. But for applications such as raster, where you're really trying to optimize the inertia of the X mirror, this can help. (But actually for those applications, there are other ways to arrange the X and Y scanners to further reduce the size of the X mirror.)

Yes, same thing I said, though the aim is to reduce beam spread on the X mirror rather than reduce its size. Whether people will get a good performance with reduction in beam path angles as great as 30° will depend on many things, but my efforts lead me to totally recommend trying it as a starting point. After all, why start low and aim high if it's just as easy to aim for high performance and scale back to avoid a bit of spill or beam clipping if it gets offensive? I think the difference between 3.5mm and 4.5 mm diameter is exactly the right kind of aperture increase that many people with big diode beams and cheap scanners are looking for.

[edison]

Edison, you are completely out to lunch when you say the safety lenses are only as valuable as the glass they are made of. Ever listen to Beethoven? It's only some cheap ink and paper. Right?

I don,t think its as valuable as the glass they are made of. Do you really believe that scansafetylenses came on the market to "help" the lasermarket? If that was the case they should be cheap as chips. I can clearly see your an intelligent and well educated man but i,m suprised that your not seeing the big picture here. The reason for fabricating the bracket and sell them cheap is only to make it easier for the customer and tie them to pangolins lenses. I,m pretty sure its not a universal design where also other safetylenses would fit.

But if they can make a modest profit and bring a cheap high performance scanner within the reach of mere mortals, then that IS helping the laser community and it HAS to be a good thing for both the community and Pangolin.

So that means in your book bringing mass produced products with good quality and low cost on the market is a form of "helping" ? So when you would work at a factory where they manufacture high qualllity scanners and your boss decides to move the whole production to china with the result of loosing your job? In my book that is destroying the market.

And Edison, aren't you someone that has started a business from this Forum and capitalized various things happening on the forum, Pot calling the Kettle Black me thinks

Yes, your right i started my bussiness 4 years ago by developing kits and later in time modules with partial help of members of this forum. But i made it clear that what i earn , every penny goes into the development to improve things. I,m always have been transparent in what my intentions are. I don,t represent being the "great helper"
All parts that i use are being made at a local metalshop. I could "help" the community to cheaper modules if i move manufacturing to china but i don,t do that because that would mean that my next door neighbour losses his job.

In fact when i sold kits in the beginning people said it was to expencive while you saved half of the money on a completely build module. After some time i realized that most people (not everyone) want to support you unless its dirt cheap. The majority here seems that when cheaper high quality stuff comes on the market see,s it as some form of helping. Maybe i should bring dirtcheap laserpointer hosts on the market incl a buildingplan to build a 4-7 watt laserpointer. I don,t think that that would " help" the world. The laserforum guys would be happy though.

And are you telling us that you sell your laser modules at cost with no margin to recover the R&D cost and turn some profit? Honestly from you're comment above you have no idea of business.

Yes i gained nothing in therms of making a profit where i could buy some nice clothes or a car. Every penny goes into the improvement of the products that i,m working on. So if a customer buys a module he knows that i,m using his money to make things better for him. Of course the goal is to make a living out of it but i,m not there yet. Close, very close but not completely.

ALL Companies should be banned from PL simply because every time something company related is posted; it is kind of spamming the forum which leads to arguments.

I disagree. There are numerous of threads where people that don,t own a company have arguments over certain things. Its a free forum and it should stay like that.

The laser show business is actually being destroyed by cheaper and cheaper products in china which are placing lasers the hands of idiots. Like it or not that is the reality.

I totally agree.

The industry is actually being fucked up and this is not only my opinion.

I couldn,t said it better!!! Cheap dangerous high powered projectors in available for the 15 year old schoolboy!!! But no worries pangolin has a safetlylens available for a shitload of money that he can never afford and never will buy. Oh no its not their responsibility just like we are seeing with gun manufactors. Everyone in the world should be able to buy a high powered gun, pointer or projector. Lets make things dirt cheap and accessable to everyone!!! That will make the world a better place!!!!

PL is no longer a viable platform for the hobbyists; it is a marketing target for suppliers and a knowledge base for producers AKA ( cyper parasites ).

I have to agree, i bennefit from it to that people discus things and gain knowledge that i can use for expending my bussiness.

As for China, the plan to make a low-cost scanner wasn't even on our roadmap until a client came to us and asked us to make a cheap scanner for them, promising to order more than one million of them if we did... Only then did we examine how it could be done (and actually did it). Now we're offering that same technology (along with the cost benefits that result in those economies of scale) to everyone.

Great!!!! , you discovered a gap in the market, well in this case the gap came to you.

Now, does this mean we do it all for free? Of course not! But we do what we can and help out, and to make things affordable to people all over the world.

I think we have a different interpretation when it comes to the world "helping" My interpretation of the world helping is doing things for free and have no gain (financially or market strategy what so ever). Pangolin helps the community because they gain from it by letting people test their software in return for free quickshow and beyond packages. If you would hire 100 engineers it cost a shitload of money in therms of wages. So its a bussiness strategy that works for you The community is glad to help because they get things for free. Everyone wants to be part of the pangolin family. Sucking up is not my way doing things. If your product is really good in performance, quality and service i,m happy to use your products. But i,m not going to sell my soul for some free software.

And to PL members who don't have lavish financial means but do have a passion and can help out in other areas, we make special deals (as mentioned earlier in this thread).

I don,t have lavish financial income but i,m happy to pay such an amount that all others in the market also can stay in bussiness including smaller companies like eyemagic for example.

[laserist]

I've got an insight I'd like to share. Running a company isn't actually much fun. I've known some people who just want to be in charge, but if it makes them happy they manage to hide it really well. Building a company involves balancing risk against reward, and if you're careful and lucky you may stay in business. Is there room for altruism? Yes - when you're doing well. If you have a company and you don't pay yourself a salary - I've got bad news. What you have isn't a business - it's a hobby. Hobbies are good, and every once in a long while they turn into businesses. But if you think your hobby gives you some significant insight into Bill's worldview - think again. Consider the possibility you're wrong. I know that's an uncomfortable thing to do, and I know for some people it's a mental leap that they've managed to completely lock down. Still it's a valuable exercise if you ever want to run a business.

Why does Bill occasionally show up on PL? I think it's because he is an enthusiast. Every once in a while someone writes something here that's fun to read. Sometimes it's only every once in a long while. But somehow it feels like it'll be worth coming back and at least checking out the titles of the threads. But then you get pulled into a conversation that you end up regretting. You don't usually regret what you said - just the vast stupidity of the misinterpretation(s) of what you said. Many have bemoaned that PL isn't what it used to be. Look in a mirror and consider the possibility that you might be one of the reasons people like Bill with decades of experience end up preferring a root canal to reading the latest bunch of knee jerk posts. Facts are friendly. I suppose stupidity can be friendly too, but that doesn't mean stupidity = fact.

[Galvonaut]

Laserist - I couldn't agree with you more! Running a business is a tough thing to do. I'm still a hobbyist even though I decided that lasers will be a business and even now it's tough, trying to learn what I need to learn, save enough money to buy what I need to buy in order to build the stuff I need to build.

Knowing how tough business is, I sometimes regret posts I make criticising Pangolin (not Bill) when I come across an issue. It's tough though. I don't want to give Bill more stress but this forum is where I have learnt almost everything I know about lasers, it's where I get advice and it's also where I vent when something goes wrong or I can't find a piece of information.

Some criticism can be used to help business of course. And Pangolin seems to recognise this at times - after all, who completely ignores their customers? If as a big company, you take part in forum activities, I guess you have to be pretty tough - Pangolin, I am sure, has a tough outside and a squidgy middle, just like it's namesake

Keith

[Bradfo69]

I too will agree with laserist on this one...

But what I was just thinking about is edisons comments about the Safety Scan lens. This is in no way probably numerically accurate, but merely an example, as I know nothing about the real costs of R&D but, say an engineer earns $100,000 per year for round figures sake. Lets' say it took three engineers about three months of work to develop and test these lenses. That equates to $75,000 just in salary. I have no idea what a manufacturer charges to make the various blanks for testing but, I suspect, considering there are 6 different diopters of lenses I'm sure they went through a lot of blanks for testing. Lets say for sake of argument, it was $25,000 in manufacturing costs. That's not a lot of money in the real world.

So... for arguments sake, hypothetically Pangolin now has $100,000 tied up in these things. Add to that advertising costs, patent applications, legal fees, money for utilities to keep the lights on and the bathrooms flushing and lets say we're at $150,000 before the first lens is sold. Now... at $100 per lens, that's 1,500 lenses that need to be sold before a dime is made. The number of people/companies in the world that are serious about lasers and safety is, let's face it, somewhat limited. We're involved in a niche hobby/business. MOST of the people buying the vast majority of lasers (dj's, small clubs) are also probably not that concerned about adding a safety scan lens nor are necessarily even aware of it. The US market for example, have very little use for them in the first place as audience scanning is so difficult to get approved for so... the US market in particular is small. So to suggest that Pangolin should be handing these out a trade shows as a freebie (or selling for $10) is ridiculous. That's 15,000 lenses! For a pretty small market - before making a dime.

I have the lens holder - as a matter of fact, I have 7. And the fact that they can produce them for a mere $29.95 in and of itself, is amazing. I'm sure it cost more than $44,925 to develop. ($29.95 x 1500)

That was my PL diversion... now back to work.

[buffo]

Laserist really nailed it in his post above. Well said.

No one argues the fact that Bill is in business to make money. (Business is business, after all.) But unlike many other companies, Pangolin also makes an effort to reach out to the hobbyist community, whether they use Pangolin products or not. That separates them from just about every other commercial laser company I can think of, and it's the main reason why people really support Bill.

He does good things for the community, even when it doesn't benefit him or his company. That is a rare thing these days. (Consider just one example: DZ's color correction board. It's based on Bill's original circuit which was released for free to the public. Without that, it's unlikely that we would have ever had the color boards. Yet Bill never made a dime off that circuit, and many people who do not use Pangolin products still benefit from it.)

If someone were seriously jaded, they might say that the only reason Bill attends Laser Enthusiast's Meetings is because he hopes to drum up future business. But if you've ever actually BEEN to a meet where Bill was present, you'd see that this is not the case. Bill helps everyone, even people who have no intention of ever owning Pangolin products. (How many people have had their scanners tuned by Bill even though they were running Mamba Black, or LSX, or Spaghetti?) Bill does this because at heart, he's just another laser geek like the rest of us. (Albeit quite a bit more knowledgeable.) He actually ENJOYS geeking out, just like we all do.

The problem is that lots of people here on PL have never met Bill in person, and have only the posts here on PL to judge him by. Given that the forum is a very narrow bandwidth communication medium, it's very easy to misunderstand someone's intent. This is particularly true when it comes to Bill, since so many people automatically assume that because he runs a business (and a very successful one at that), everything he does must be centered around making money. That prejudice colors everyone's replies here in the forum. It's as if some people are already looking for any phrase that can be turned against Bill.

The exception, of course, lies with those people who have had the opportunity to meet him in person - to sit down and chat with him about all kinds of laser-related topics, and to learn from his vast experience. Those people gain an understanding about where Bill is really coming from. Sure, he's still in the business to make money, but that's not the only thing he's about.

For those people who continue to insist that Pangolin is only motivated by money and market share, consider this: The vast majority of the members here on PL who have met Bill personally are completely at odds with your opinion. Considering that most of you people have not met Bill, and the vast majority of his supporters have, don't you think it's likely that you have the wrong idea? Or are you really so arrogant that you'll readily assume you are correct and everyone else is wrong?

Think about that for a moment...

Adam

[mixedgas]

Sorry guys, I expected to have a review up. Unfortunately you guys have nothing better to do then argue while I try to avoid a expensive trip from eastern Europe for a master system designer. He does not do well being on a plane for 15 hours. I'm working on installed unit one of a brand new system. Mr Murphy paid us a visit, and brought Missus Murphy and his Mistress the evil hacker. Not to mention its unit one on the first Win 8 host system. If I can ever get out of snowed in South Bend.

As for the 506's

You are about to see something revolutionary.

As for the politics,
I for one requested a pair to evaluate, this is my doing, not some marketing scheme. I wanted to know what these would do on a T2.

Your going to see video and scope shots for small and large jump, plus linearity testing.

The usual people seized the thread with the usual arguments, making this emotional and noisy. Perhaps I should do the review on my own web page.

Chill Out!






Steve