scanner options?

[Pangolin]

The scanners were well matched in the Creation test as far as visual performance goes

I think if we picked anyone off the street, and told them to watch the two side by side, nobody would be able to tell the difference. On the other hand, if patient PL members watch the videos frame by frame, you will see areas on the graphics where the DT-40s were bending and where ours were not. But still, who is really going to do this kind of thing? The performance was really pretty similar to your average viewer. But that proves my point that so-called "40K" does not offer any advantages.

though I did see flaring on the "stars" in the DT40 image toward the beginning.

Yes, this has to do with the disparity between small signal performance and large signal performance. This is especially evident in that "rotating Laser Media test pattern" test, inspired by a question asked by PL Member The Doctor (thanks Doc!). The large signal performance of this little scanner is really very impressive. On typical amps, it's superior to what we see from Cambridge 6210s as well.

One thing that I have always noticed on the PT scanners and also on my DT40s is; when projecting dots or fans of beams, as the scan angle gets larger, the outermost points start to flare. My guess would be from ringing. I noticed that the 506's did not do this flaring which, to me, shows great stability.

It's hard for me to tell what is going on given only a written description. But off the cuff, you may be seeing distortion in the outer beams because they are farther away, and thus require longer jumps, and thus really show areas where large signal performance is lacking. You could also be seeing distortion there because on the outside, that's where linearity of the position signal will also become apparent. Since all Chinese scanners I have ever seen use an inexpensive LED, their linearity really suffers at large angles. The Compact 506 linearity also starts to suffer at angles much greater than 50 degrees.

In this demo, we were operating at 53 degrees (which allows you to make a 10-foot-wide image if you are 10 feet away from the projection surface). Our mirrors could easily handle 60 degrees but when I was tuning these scanners up on this amp, 53 gave overall better images. Still, 60 could be used for beam effects.

One thing that is apparent, but not discussed on the video, is that although the DT-40 was also set for around 53 degrees, the laser beam was actually skating off the edge of the Y mirror on one end, and bumping into the shaft on the other end. So it means that there is power loss on the left and right sides of the image. If you look closely, particularly when I made the full size laser media test pattern, you can really see this.

I am impressed with the temperature of the scanner block on the 506s after being driven so hard.

Yes, we were impressed too! Some of this is non-intuitive. According to our computer models, the heat loading on Compact 506 should be the same, but clearly it is not. I was really hoping that this would be even more dramatic, and earlier in the day when I did the same thing with DT40s, they got a bit higher than 50 degrees. I'm not sure what the difference was... But in all cases, our scanners never got above 35C, even though they were essentially in mid air.

Bill

[swamidog]

congratulations.. these look like great little scanners. the dt40 ringing is the bane of my existence, and these being nearly a drop in update makes it kind of a no brainer.

so... uhm.. how do i get a pair? i promise to drive them really hard.

Hi guys,

Well I said I would make a video to try to explain the differences in scanners, benefits of our Compact 506, angular loss with operating at 40K etc. and I did just that tonight. Here you can see a video that we made where we run our scanners side by side with DT40s. I'll leave it to all of you to observe the differences and pick the winner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iWjpz2YEO0

Bill

[Pangolin]

so... uhm.. how do i get a pair? i promise to drive them really hard.

For the time being, the best way is to send us an amp and we'll pair our scanners with your amp and send them back. That's what Norty and others have done.

Also, there will be a bit of a delay now since we've completely consumed the prototypes and we also received orders for a few hundred from laser manufacturers. With this being the case plus our preparing for Photonics West tradeshow coming up in two weeks, I predict that it will be perhaps up to 4 weeks before we'll have enough in stock where we could start selling to individuals again.

Bill

[swamidog]

i will be happy to do that. i'll hit you up in PM land for the details, and thank you.

i'm aworking on some laser related photography/art projects at the moment and they're somewhat time critical, if there's a 4 week delay, it would be better for me to wait until the other side of the window. no worries.

For the time being, the best way is to send us an amp and we'll pair our scanners with your amp and send them back. That's what Norty and others have done.

Also, there will be a bit of a delay now since we've completely consumed the prototypes and we also received orders for a few hundred from laser manufacturers. With this being the case plus our preparing for Photonics West tradeshow coming up in two weeks, I predict that it will be perhaps up to 4 weeks before we'll have enough in stock where we could start selling to individuals again.

Bill

[Pangolin]

it would be better for me to wait until the other side of the window.

Sure, a bird in the hand is always worth two in the bush

(I hope those outside the USA will understand the reference...)

Bill

[cipher0]

Thank you for your comparison video.

"As far as we know "DT40" is really just the model number, not really the "K" of the scanner".

The "40" in "DT40" actually stands for 40K. This is how many Chinese scanners are named.
http://www.dtelectronic.cn/production.asp?ArticleID=6
Here's the page of DT30 for comparison.

What I really wanted to see was how the 506 would compare to a DT40 at the angle DT40 claims to do 40K.
This video focused more on larger angles which we already knew 506 was better at from reviews and at which DT40 doesn't claim to be able to do 40K or maybe even 30K anyway, and the ringing effect with the DT40, which might not be an issue for some because like you said ask a random person on the street and he might not see the difference.

[absolom7691]

which might not be an issue for some because like you said ask a random person on the street and he might not see the difference.

You are correct. So it really comes down to what kind of quality you want to put into your shows. I didn't mention the bending lines in my post because I thought is was blatantly obvious. Especially the part of the show in which they are showing all the doors in the "arena". There was severe bending at the bottom corners of the doors on the DT40s. If galvo ringing and images that are not so sharp are okay with you, it really doesn't matter what the average person on the street sees or not, it is up to you.

[Galvonaut]

Very nice Bill.

The biggest thing I noticed between the scanners was that the DT40 flickered more when projecting more complex graphics.

I would like to see a truly balanced test - DT40s in Kvant as well as 506s and rather than a Y-cable, each projector set up with it's own software optimisation. I kept noticing things which seemed to be due to beam size, alignment, colour blanking etc.

Nice scanners and nice show too

Keith

[Galvonaut]

I think it's to do with the phase of shutter and scanning. It's one of the reasons I'd like to see them in person, with separate optimisation settings for each scan set, the same lasers, the same modulation and the human eye for comparison.

I'm not doubting these scanners - the fact that they run so cool is a massive plus and the small form factor is fantastic.

Bill - What will the aperture height be for these scanners?

Keith

[Pangolin]

The "40" in "DT40" actually stands for 40K. This is how many Chinese scanners are named.

Hehe. Guys. Remember where all of this came from... It came from a Cambridge model 6800 designed in 1992. That was a 30K scanner... What I tried to explain was what makes a scanner a certain amount of "K". I tried to explain this in the quickest and simplest way that I could (torque-to-inertia ratio and heat loading on the coil). In an earlier take of the video, I tried to explain it more, going into all of the formulas and such, but after a quick review I decided that only a few people would really understand it in the first place, and that anyone else would surely stop the video after the first 30 seconds.

The point that I tried to make in my video is that just because something is called "40 something" or even "40K" doesn't mean it can really do 40K, or that it would provide 40/30 more benefit to end-users. Also, during the video even Justin (our COO and chief marketing guy) suggested that we come up with a different name.

So let me ask you folks, if we called this "Turbo Scan 5000" would you feel better about it? Would it make it that much more compelling? Or how about if we called it "Turbo Scan 50" or even "Turbo Scan 50K", would you feel better about it then????

See folks all of this is about "feeling". "40" is more than "30" so perhaps there is a natural tendency to believe it's better even though I showed that -- at best, it isn't better and in many cases it's worst. Remember even the 24K test pattern I showed looked inferior on DT40s. Remember even the 30K pattern I showed looked inferior. And these were not at super-large angles either!

What I really wanted to see was how the 506 would compare to a DT40 at the angle DT40 claims to do 40K.

Hehe. Well we did show that, remember? DT40 may *claim* to be able to go 40K at 8 degrees, but in our testing it could not even properly do 40K even at 5.5 degrees. We show this in the video. Plus, remember just how tiny 5.5 degrees was! See, it seems to me that this is not a usable angle. Even if DT40 could do better in such a small angle, how many people have projectors located across the street from the screen, to give a sufficiently-large throw to be usable?

Honestly folks, as I mentioned in the past, *any* scanner can be tuned to go faster than it's really designed to go, but when you do this, you'll be sacrificing performance *somewhere*. Either you'll start exciting resonances, or you'll give up large-signal performance, or increase heat beyond the capacity of the scanner, or all of these things.

Tell you what. What if I produce another video in which I tune our Compact 506 scanners to 50K. Would that make you happy?? I am absolutely sure we can hit 50K with these, or even 60K, and that there would not be any resonances noticeable (due to the way we make our rotors). But I am also absolutely sure that the angle would be so tiny as to not be usable.

Folks, one of the difficulties is that we're all about real engineering at Pangolin, not really about feelings. (Heck, if we were about feelings we wouldn't have named it "Compact 506" which speaks to technical aspects of the package.) We're trying to offer a product that is highly usable and offers features from which people can really benefit.