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Thread: Scannermax 506s

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    Default Scannermax 506s

    Moving this to a new thread from "To The laser Show Software Companies"

    This is where I sent Bill a beat up old Turbrotrack II for testing with the 506.

    -----------------------------------------------------

    A Continuación:


    So I went to see Bill Benner last night. I didn't expect to be in Orlando, I expected to be on the beach. But Life has its surprises.

    Sorry about the cables guys, the right wire is hard to come by in small Qs. I did my best. The CT style connectors are something that will have to come premade with the amps for most people, I had to build mine under a high power magnifier.


    So here is where the 506's Shine from visual observation.

    I got to see a few things Norty would not, unless he sacrificed a 506 to open it up. I'll mention those later.

    1. They run cool. Bill pushed them to full angle and even into near shutdown on the Turbotrack and they barely got above room temperature. Under the same conditions you would be replacing damaged Asian or Older American galvos.

    2. The H-Bridge runs cool, and does not reach saturation (long jump) conditions as rapidly as it would on older systems. This is due to the design of the magnetics and coils. You thus have more electrical headroom nearing full angle, and thus better images. When they get past full angle, you see rounding at the edges of the image, not the grinding noise of hitting the stops, as there are no stops.

    3. The new position sensor is marvelous in terms of linearity. I haven't even had the chance to measure the linearity, and I will not until I get home, but graphics with these are razor sharp at the scan field edges, even on the Grid Test, and you will hit tighter "groupings" on bounce mirrors then Asian products. The design of the new sensor does not use a classic, low cost, flag or vane. The sensor signal level is magnificent, the modification to the amp consisted of paralleling nearly equal value resistors on the differential amp at the input. This reduces the stage gain, not increasing it. With a higher magnitude of position signal, the signal to noise level improves greatly. So less noise in your image and better accuracy. There was a simple cap change in the rear of the amp, again putting a cap in parallel with the existing part. This better matched the drive stage to the coil, it was not a change in the PID loop parts.

    4. The mount is tiny and flexible. You can flip left/right handedness easy enough. Under certain conditions, if your amp does not support reversing the coil wiring, you may need to flip motor + and motor -. No big deal, it would be easy enough to adapt the cable or stock another cable. T2 nicely supports flipping, so no issue.

    5. Are they fast, No, they are a 30K galvo, but they are wide angle. So wide you can need pincushion/tangent correction on short throws. Software UGC is more then sufficient. Is it a distortion in the galvo?, no its a beam geometry issue and would be present with any galvo at this angle.

    6. Round shapes are round, you can see the effects of the equal inertia mirrors on circles and abstracts. Mirrors are a breeze to replace.

    7. The pre-load spring on the shaft is precision and centered by a spider much like that on a Hene tube for centering the bore. This removes drag because the spring only applies force on the rotor where it needs to.

    8. Where the new Scannermax designs excel is the coil winding and magnetics. I was shown the coil from nearly everything on the market. Under a microscope, it is amazing how poor the windings on most coils look. The previous designs have weaves and gaps in the turns from trying to force wires into a 3D shape that does not lend itself to neat wiring. Asian devices were particularly bad in this regard. Asian coils have superglue and potting on them. You can see the discoloration from the heat on the cheaper coils. The American coils have a thermally conductive epoxy, as expected. That shape gets rammed into a solid shell that functions as the magnetic poles as well. Soild shells suffer from nasty Eddy current losses.

    Because Bill has really good control over his laminations, He has what I would term the "perfect" coil. They look like works of art. Yes, these galvos have stacked laminations, if you varnish or oxidize the lamination there is no conduction from lamination to lamination, reducing Eddy current loss. Since the laminations have a precision shape, and since your not ramming it into a barrel hoping it clears the rotor when inserted, you get to use a much better machine wound coil. Galvo coils are 3d shapes, and 3D shapes can be tough to wind. Bill's coils have less turns, and are a precise work of art with no gaps between turns. Bill can also stack different sized coils, taking advantage of the available space. Less Loss, less turns needed, more field, better unit to unit consistency, and amazing thermal conductivity. If you ever wondered why two identical galvos tune very different, here is your "Why", its the coil shape and possibly the rotor.

    Unlike the traditional rammed coil magnetics, building a Scannermax Galvo on the production floor is fast, its made mainly of stacked disks.. There is no wondering if the coil is going to drag on the rotor.

    9. The rotor magnetics, I'll save for part two.

    10. The bearings. Very nice bearings. A past observation of mine, and Bill produced visual examples of this, is that on Asian scanners, the oil is pushed out of the bearing during operation. I've found it also leaks out by "pumping" from temperature changes when setting on the shelf, and when the coils heat the case. If you look at the side seals on a Asian galvo bearing, you can see why, the construction is poor. Look at your scanner shafts with a magnifying glass. The oil is actually a dirty brown if its leaking. Once the bearings start to wear from lack of lubrication, there is not much you can do. From the looks of it, the lifetime is decreasing from day one.

    506 has very nice, German, ceramic bearings with excellent seals and is a permanently lubricated design, the bearings should last a very long time. (Recent edit to be clear in meaning.)

    11. As for amps, I did see the small hybrid digital/analog amp in Cad, its coming. Its a dual, analog amp, with digital tuning via USB.
    It is credit card sized. I also saw the fully digital DSP Amp for Saturn that we have mentioned in the past.

    12. There were some other projects shown. I saw the new scan angle magnifier lens, but in CAD and in the Physical form. It has a huge clear aperture. There is no limiting iris halfway up the lens, which is nice. You can look through it and see its effect. When 90K scanning gets here, and it is coming, the lens will be useful. The new lens is very compact, with the trend to lower height projectors, it will fit nicely. The mount is nice as well.

    13. Connector placement matters. The design of the connector location is well thought out, and will reduce mechanical interference in projector design.

    14. There are no stops on the mirrors, and since this design has no torsion bar, the mirror can rotate 360'. Before you panic, the internal magnetic spring returns the mirror to center when powered down. Even better yet, the design of the new patented position sensor returns the flipped mirror to the correct position. EVEN IF YOU POWER DOWN THE AMP AND ROTATE THE MIRROR 180'. This is good, if a mirror gets bumped when powered down, there is less likelihood of breaking the mirror. This is also good in that if you modestly overdrive the scanner, your not doing damage to the magnet or sensor.

    15. The mirrors are thick and beefy, not so likely to be broken. Bill showed me the reflectance curve vs wavelength, its excellent. There are slight dips near 445 and 650, but better to have the dips where we have excess power.

    Pangolin has a modest, well equipped shop. The electronic instrumentation is first rate, and he has a few test instruments that one would expect to see in a more academic setting. Pangolin is gearing up Galvo production and working to separate Galvo production from the production of other products.

    If this sounds like a press release, well..... I didn't find anything to Ding the 506s on, I doubt I will find anything unusual, and I won't have them on a test bench for a few more days.

    Norty's set has larger mirrors and a single ended Amp. I have mirrors more appropriate to small beams. So the race is between Norty's set getting across the Atlantic and me getting home on possibly the 3rd.

    ***. Yes, I did ask about pushing these to higher speeds at small angle. 30K is 30K It is the design value. There is not much room for a "speed" push. However its 30K at a very large angle, which has what we have needed.

    Pricing is modest, I've seen an invoice for a set. Its easily affordable for most PLers.

    Steve

    Last edited by mixedgas; Yesterday at 12:07.
    Last edited by mixedgas; 01-01-2014 at 16:04.
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    Thanks for the update Steve, can't wait to get my greasy paws on a set!

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    Steve, do you mind if I add my comments to this thread once I've received mine? It probably makes most sense for the readers to have it all in one place
    Frikkin Lasers
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    This all sounds promising. Thanks for your initial review.

    Keith

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    Quote Originally Posted by norty303 View Post
    Steve, do you mind if I add my comments to this thread once I've received mine? It probably makes most sense for the readers to have it all in one place
    Norty.
    Not at all. We only have a ubersuperJanitor here, and no mods, so I figured it was best to break this out from Pages and Pages of stuff.

    Steve
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    Posting for tracking of all further well-done Infomercials...

    j
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    Post for future tracking and information. Out of curiosity, is it possible/advisable to re-oil DT bearings?
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    mixedgas's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by dnar View Post
    Post for future tracking and information. Out of curiosity, is it possible/advisable to re-oil DT bearings?
    NO, I tried with mixed results, I can't recommend it.

    You have to have a very light oil with a low vapor pressure. You have to press on the bearing wall to get the oil in with a needle pick. If the oil flows past the bearing and into the rotor, and it can, you have another issue. The oil filling the .002 inch gap between the rotor and the stator kills the galvo. T

    When relubricated, the bearing then pumps out the new oil faster because you unseated the race to get the oil in. Worked for a few weeks, then the oil worked out again and the race wall was damaged in a few minutes of dry operation.

    The re-lubed galvo is not something I'd use for a show. In my case it was for a bench set I use for digitizing.

    The fact that you can get oil in by pressing on the race wall with a needle should tell you all you need to know about the cheap bearings.

    Whatever oil they use gels when cold, too.


    Steve
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    Thanks, noted. I find most Chinese products use rubbish lubricant, prolly scraped from the nut sack of local village monkeys...How many fans have I seen or heard run noisy after just a few months, I generally always pull them apart from new now, clean the sleeve bearing and relube with Teflon lubricant, they then run quiet and faster forever it appears. I swear by Teflon lube...
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    Quote Originally Posted by mixedgas View Post
    ...Whatever oil they use gels when cold, too.
    ..prolly the same toothpaste they use to 'secure' dichro-combining mounts..
    ....and armed only with his trusty 21 Zorgawatt KTiOPO4...

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