So I went to see Bill 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. 506 has very nice, German, ceramic bearings with excellent seals. 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.
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.
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. I'ts easily affordable for most PLers.
Steve
Last edited by mixedgas; 12-31-2013 at 08:07.
Qui habet Christos, habet Vitam!
I should have rented the space under my name for advertising.
When I still could have...
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Originally Posted by Pangolin
....and armed only with his trusty 21 Zorgawatt KTiOPO4...
