A New Homebuild Featuring EyeMagic's Iris ColorSafe System

[dkumpula]

Hey folks,

So I FINALLY completed a build for Kecked that I've been working on for what seems like forever. It is a 1.1W single mode RGB build (1x 650nm, 1x 638nm, 2x 520nm, 2x 450nm) combined with 1.5W of 2x 405nm for glow in the dark art creation. First some quick pics and comments:

Goldenstar Case. Solid, quality alum, nice heatsink baseplate:


There was lots of drilling and filing to make this backplate as there were lots of switches to install for this build:


The Brass and M1 type dichro mounts came from Goldenstar. Kecked wanted something that was easy for him to realign as necessary so I didn't use my favorite tiny mounts. It resulted in a larger footprint, but there was adequate space available in the case (barely!). This is the first time I've used dichro mounts from Goldenstar and they worked well. The brass ones are based on a four hex screw push system as opposed to the push-pull approach more commonly used. I was pleased that they didn't float like other brass mounts after getting in place.


The little alum plate in front of the galvos is to limit ambient light from coming out of the aperture:


Four PBS cubes + three dichros, two bounce mirrors, and one optical sensor . . . I must enjoy doing near field alignment!


RGB Mode or


Glow in the Dark (405nm) mode. It can be switched between the two with DMX or by flipping override switches on the back. Also note that 405nm lasers are not controlled by the Iris board and are therefore placed after the optical sensor in the beampath.


This is a relatively complicated build, so there was more signal cabling than I'm used to. I did my best to bundle neatly to appease those of you with wiring OCD, but it still makes me a bit mental.


This build sports CT-6215s doing 60Kpps that Kecked had sitting in a box for several years. CT mirrors don't reflect 405nm, so I hand-grinded a set of mirrors to the same CT size/weight specs derived from Pangolin stock mirrors which reflect 405nm really well. After remounting I noticed a massive problem with waves of distortion in the galvos that took about a month to discover it was something to do with the amps being particularly sensitive to power noise coming from my disco's server closet. (Covered in this thread.) Again many thanks to you gurus that weighed in with your advice and assistance with this issue!

Anyhow, with that mystery resolved I moved onto the fun part; tuning the first EyeMagic Iris ColorSafe system I've ever seen. I wish I knew more about the history of this product and why we don't see more of them around as they do some really cool stuff with real-time monitoring for beam power adjustments that works really well. They also provide a hardware based safety zone that adjusts according to beam power and galvo velocity as opposed to just dropping the power within a certain projection range like traditional BAM does. Here's a video that I compiled with my findings:


Now its time to continue the next build . . .

-David

[kecked]

Thanks a million for getting this together for me. I'm really excited to see this done. I certainly gave you a difficult task to say the least! I fell in love with the idea of iris the minute I saw it and bought one but never installed it until you did so for me. I think it is something people should consider. I got it purely for the color side of the system as I do not do shows outside my living room and really don't do beams at all. That said the basic hardware mask is really a special system but its not PASS or certified as such. For the money you really should look at it.

PS: the mm1s are because I have big fingers and shaky hands. it's a B getting old.

[dkumpula]

Happy to help, Marc!

I agree with you regarding these being worth a serious look. I can see them in most of my projectors - sometimes for uber-low color control, but also for the safety zones as they offer more robust control than my software does (as long as you want beam attenuation in a horizontal strip which I generally do). For graduated BAM, I'd still use software control.

The use of the MM1s was a nice change. Super easy to adjust these guys on the plate and using the thumbwheels. The only downsides are price (by a bit) and the larger footprint.

-David

[logsquared]

Very cool, well done. Cool to see new builds on PL. Does that case have a fan?

[dkumpula]

Very cool, well done. Cool to see new builds on PL. Does that case have a fan?

Thank you! The case has four fans on the bottom of the heatsink baseplate, but no active cooling in the case itself. To be honest this makes me a bit anxious as CT-6215s running at 60Kpps are supposed to generate a substantial amount of heat. In testing, I didn't feel any significant heat on galvos, amps, PSUs or diode mounts after running it on test patterns for ~30 minutes with the lid closed. Everything that generates heat has good thermal paste at its optics plate contact points, of course.

Kecked is going to be running this projector in his home, which I imagine is not like the ceiling of a hot club, so hopefully the test conditions adequately match the destined environment.

-David

[araugh]

Beautiful build as always. The video was really interesting, I had heard of the colorsafe system but not met anyone that's used it before. There are some other interesting offerings from EyeMagic, I hear they have some scanners now with digital amps available but there's not much documentation or even anecdotal coverage out there about them.

[norty303]

Not sure if you already had the case or bought it for this specifically, but in the past Goldenstar have done custom CNC panels for me, to accommodate things like Stanwax breakout boards.
I just sent Sketchup files and they did the panels! Well worth the time saved on cutting and filing.

[LASERGUY]

Great Video! Good Work!!

[dkumpula]

. . . I had heard of the colorsafe system but not met anyone that's used it before. There are some other interesting offerings from EyeMagic, I hear they have some scanners now with digital amps available but there's not much documentation or even anecdotal coverage out there about them.

Interesting! I've not heard a peep. Perhaps someone should harass Tom to market a bit more.

Not sure if you already had the case or bought it for this specifically, but in the past Goldenstar have done custom CNC panels for me, to accommodate things like Stanwax breakout boards.
I just sent Sketchup files and they did the panels! Well worth the time saved on cutting and filing.

Thanks, Norty. Good to know. I literally just got a mini-mill two days ago to help with these panels. In this case (pun intended ), I wasn't sure how things were going to work out until I had everything in front of me. I didn't install the components for Iris until I was sure it was working as designed. This said, most of my projects are pretty organic starting with an empty case/enclosure that I think will barely fit the components. I then manually lay things out and get to cutting / drilling.

ARaugh did a great overview course for Autodesk 360 at SELEM this year. He make projector design look really easy, but I need to spend some time getting my head around it.

-David

[sbk]

Very nice build, congrats!

And very interesting to see those ColorSafe in action, actually I have two of those boards running into projectors since many years, but WITHOUT sensors, just acting as a offset/gain and standard safety. I had plans to install later the sensors, but time flies and still nothing done... Though your nice review makes me want to order sensors now

There are some other interesting offerings from EyeMagic, I hear they have some scanners now with digital amps available but there's not much documentation or even anecdotal coverage out there about them.

Indeed they offer now digital amps for the EMS-8000 galvos, it's actually a single board, dual axis amp. I own two and they are performing very well.
With 5mm square aperture, they advertise 55k @7° and they are really doing that, even better. The large angle scan capabilities have always been amazing with those EyeMagic scanners (I own 9 sets so far), and with digital amps it's even more impressive as you can really abuse them without overheating or any other issue.