Thinking about cannibalizing some DMX lights for their GOBO wheels and such...

[Stiffler]

I think this goes without saying, but I love lasers. Right now I am gathering the parts for my first projector build, which I should have finished by the end of summer. As much as I love high power beam shows, I am more mesmerized by lumias and diffraction gratings....So I have a couple of *broken* moving heads that have rotating gobo wheels, and I was thinking, since the resale value of these aint shit, why not do something cool with them? The only problem I am faced with, is my lack of technical electronics knowledge, which I'm sure I'll need to make any scavanged parts function properly. Has anyone here attempted this before? can anyone offer some tips or advice?

I know I ask a lot of questions, but I promise some day I'll have something to show for all of the info I get here!!

[swamidog]

i have been toying with the idea of buying some broken lights on ebay and repurposing the scan through wheels for my laser projector. please let me know how things go.

I think this goes without saying, but I love lasers. Right now I am gathering the parts for my first projector build, which I should have finished by the end of summer. As much as I love high power beam shows, I am more mesmerized by lumias and diffraction gratings....So I have a couple of *broken* moving heads that have rotating gobo wheels, and I was thinking, since the resale value of these aint shit, why not do something cool with them? The only problem I am faced with, is my lack of technical electronics knowledge, which I'm sure I'll need to make any scavanged parts function properly. Has anyone here attempted this before? can anyone offer some tips or advice?

I know I ask a lot of questions, but I promise some day I'll have something to show for all of the info I get here!!

[absolom7691]

I have been doing this exact thing. Two of my scansets are going to have a scanthrough wheel, and the other two are going to have a rotating lenticular. Anyway, this the dichro wheel taken from an MBT DMX scanner. I cut out sections to make sure the scanned image would fit without clipping. This wheel is going to have a diffraction grating, a curved diffraction grating, a fesnel lens and a few other bits.

[dkumpula]

Great idea to re-purpose otherwise dead electronics!

I've taken two approaches to this so far. First a mod using a very cheap new mirror scanner described in detail here: http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...-RGB-Projector.

The cost of this approach was $250 (well a bit more after breaking the glass wheel) and it is still working well today.

Another is taking a LK-PD2 that had a rotating gobo mechanism in it already. The LK-PD2 has 4 rotatable gobo slots and 4 static ones (one of which you'd likely want to leave open.) The newer model LK-PD3 has 8 rotatable gobos, I'm told. This device runs for $500 as I recall. I modded mine with analog diode drivers, a more powerful green, and PT-40 scanners in order to make it a fairly respectable little graphics and lumia projector.

This said, I'd use what you've got if the necessary parts are functioning. If it doesn't work out, all you've lost is time.

-David

[Revmutt]

Great idea to re-purpose otherwise dead electronics!

Another is taking a LK-PD2 that had a rotating gobo mechanism in it already. The LK-PD2 has 4 rotatable gobo slots and 4 static ones (one of which you'd likely want to leave open.) The newer model LK-PD3 has 8 rotatable gobos, I'm told. This device runs for $500 as I recall. I modded mine with analog diode drivers, a more powerful green, and PT-40 scanners in order to make it a fairly respectable little graphics and lumia projector.

This said, I'd use what you've got if the necessary parts are functioning. If it doesn't work out, all you've lost is time.

-David

On this subject, how difficult is it to replace the scanners with better ones, I have one of these projectors and I'm curious whether that's worth pursuing.
Tommy

[dkumpula]

On this subject, how difficult is it to replace the scanners with better ones, I have one of these projectors and I'm curious whether that's worth pursuing.
Tommy

I swapped out the scanners with DT-30s and then again to PT-40s. The difficulties with doing the swap are two-fold.

First, the old scanners run off a terribly tiny all-in-one PSU that runs the scanner drivers at +/- 15v instead of the normal +/- 24v. The unit is so crammed tight already with the larger drivers (which are easy to switch out by the way), there is no way to get an additional stock PSU into the unit. You might be able to find a decent open frame PSU that does +/- 24V and +12v for everything else, but I opted to add a section onto the bottom of the case instead.



The other issue is the lack of clearance for the scanners. The original scanners are quite small and mounted in a tiny mount with little contact on the scanners. This is certainly not something you'd want to use with most scanners as they would bake themselves to death in short order. (Perhaps the ScannerMax 506's from Pangolin would be an easier swap as they are small and supposed to remain cool under heavy use.)



Instead I dug through my supplies and found a mount for the right height and shaved off a corner of it to keep it from interfering with the 'gobo wheel'. In this case, the mount also had to touch directly against the stepper motors for the galvo wheel.



The end result is working quite well, but I admit is was more effort than I originally planned for.

-David

[Displaser]

The end result is working quite well, but I admit is was more effort than I originally planned for.

-David

Nice work David!

I think the 506's would be a perfect candidate for these smaller effects wheels. One effect that I really like is to rotate the lumia glass in front of a static beam. Two different effects are now possible - 1) when the laser is on the outer portion of the rotating wheel = lumia as we all have seen, where the pattern swirls into itself and 2) as you bring the beam inward and on axis to the rotating wheel = a static lumia pattern that rotates. I need to post a video, but having the ability to do both lumia effects from one wheel is desirable.

Greg

[dkumpula]

I think the 506's would be a perfect candidate for these smaller effects wheels. One effect that I really like is to rotate the lumia glass in front of a static beam. Two different effects are now possible - 1) when the laser is on the outer portion of the rotating wheel = lumia as we all have seen, where the pattern swirls into itself and 2) as you bring the beam inward and on axis to the rotating wheel = a static lumia pattern that rotates. I need to post a video, but having the ability to do both lumia effects from one wheel is desirable.

Thanks, Greg. I certainly agree that combining scanners with adjustable speed rotating wheels (assuming you can get them slow enough) is more interesting than either alone. Of course, combining multiple wheels simultaneously further ups the ante.

I need to spend more time with the lumia effects I have to see what interesting things I can create with them. I look forward to your video posts to lend some inspiration!

-David

[CountFunkula]

Do it!!!

Intelligent lights are a great source for some ready-made opto-mechanics. I am the proud owner [read: parent] of two Cyberlight SV's. They're both fully functional, and I have a stock of just enough spare parts to keep them that way. In my spare parts stash, I've got a complete gobo/litho wheel rotator assembly. That assembly as a whole is not particularly prone to failure, so I've been planning on building it into a laser projector for some rotatable scan-thru effects-ness...It's just been more of an issue of free time rather than materials.

[VJ AIWAZ]

if any one wants them i have a few lights that were in a flood

1 mac 700/ 1 mac 250 krypton /1 studio color / and 2 claypaky golden scan 3's/ there are also a few martin 518's