Hardware list for SELEM 2008

[DZ]

waiting for a medical test on the 20th, then I'll be available

Steve

That's great Steve, can't wait to hear on the 20th whether you going to be able to make it to SELEM...

[buffo]

Steve, SELEM is on the 16th and 17th... Waiting until the 20th means you're waiting past SELEM!

Stuka:

You may be surprised. I have a feeling your projector will be out-performing mine - especially in light of recent events. You see, my Lasever blue just died again. And no, this time it was my own fault. Well, sort of.

I finally tracked down the noise problem. I've got 5 volts that floats on my ground plane. It's intermittent, and the source appears to be one or both of the Lasever DPSS units. Not sure if it's the blue or the green though. (Thinking it's the new green, actually.)

Anyway, while checking something totally unrelated, my hand slipped while holding the multimeter probe. (I guess it was a bad idea to work on the projector again tonight, since it was the 4th night in a row and I had an especially long day at work.) POW! I shorted 120 volts AC to ground for a brief instant. But that was all it took. (remember, all grounds are tied together) It smoked the driver for my Lasever blue even though it wasn't powered up. FUCK!

As I said though, it's my fault. I'm tired as hell and my hand just slipped. On the other hand, if I wasn't getting the current leak from the Lasever units in the first place, I wouldn't have needed to be poking around with a multimeter!

Anyway, DZ and Spec are going to have a look at it on Friday, and maybe we'll get lucky and be able to find some parts at Radio Shack that will get it up and running again in time for SELEM. (Looks like only one or two caps are blown. If we can figure out what they are and find replacements, we're golden.) If not, then I'll have a RYG only projector.

For the record, it looks like C1 and maybe C7 are the two caps that need replacing. Yeah, they're surface-mount, but Spec thinks he's got a steady hand...

I still need to find the current leak, but right now I'm too dejected to even think about looking for the problem. I fell like I want to drop kick one of the cats... Maybe tomorrow I'll have a look.

It's a good thing we've got so many other projectors coming this time. Looks like mine might not be 100% shipshape for this one. (At least nothing else got hurt!)

Adam

[gottaluvlasers]

adam-

let me know if you need any parts. i have billions and trillions of bins of ALL surface mount components at my regular job. i will be at work for a little bit tomorow before i leave for SELEM.

hopefully you get it sorted out. if you need some new lasers, i know a guy who can get ya some good deals on LaseWave.

-Marc

[allthatwhichis]

DOH!!! Man, guess crap like that happends to everyone. You have my condolences on the loss. Too bad I snet my dead lasever green to Robin, the caps are probably on it's driver somewhere. Do you need me to ride to Skycraft for anything?

[James Lehman]

Sorry to hear about that buffo. That's a real bummer.

I hate it whenever I do something like that. It only takes a tiny fraction of a second.

At least YOU didn't get nailed by the 120VAC!

James.

[MechEng3]

Adam...I have a driver I can bring to the event.....it has the same problem though. Let me see if I can get my hands on it. Have'nt seen it in a while since we moved. Let me know if I can help in finding the values of the parts...I can solder them no problem......easy compared to mounting a GRIN on a diode while looking into a 60X scope. The noise issue was from LM336 on the modulation circuit. It blew 2 caps shortly after the LM shorted to Gnd for no reason.

[buffo]

Thanks for all the words of encouragement, guys. I seriously feel like shit right now. You can't imagine how hard I've worked on this fucking thing over the last week, and to see it go poof like that - well, all I can say is "FUCK!"

About a month ago I got a replacement Lasever Green and installed it in the projector just before the 4th of July. It lasted for about 3 seconds before it blew up. Fortunately, it wasn't my fault that time. It was brand-new, and Dave and Aijii at Lasershowparts.com got me a replacement unit in about 3 weeks. (Aaron even let me borrow one of his Lasever green lasers so I could run my projector on the 4th of July for a party I had!)

Anyway, that episode was bad, but at least I could take solace in the fact that it wasn't my fault. Not so this time. I caused this one, and damn - it hurts!

James;

No, I didn't get shocked. The test leads are insulated. But it hurts me all the same to see smoke coming from a part that should *never* smoke... Still, you're right. It could have been worse!

Aaron;

It's the Lasever Blue, not the green. I've still got my new green, plus the green I borrowed from you. They both work fine. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the two drivers are different. Unless someone knows for sure that they're the same, the parts from one might not work on the other.

Thanks for the offer to go to Skycraft, but I wouldn't know what to tell you to get at the moment. I might end up overnighting an order if I can definitively identify the caps that I need. But I probably won't know anything until late tomorrow at the earliest

Marc;

The parts that are blown are small surface-mount capacitors. Looks like two of them are blown. C1 and C7, if you've ever seen a Lasever DPSS blue driver board. They're pretty small, but I don't know what the rating is on them. (They're cooked, so you can't read the writing.) They're rectangular, and about 3mm by 6 mm. (Actually, one of them is about 4 mm square, but the other one is more rectangular.)

I'm hoping to get some information from Dave between now and tomorrow about the size and rating for those caps. If he can get the info, I might be able to order some replacements and have them overnighted in from Digikey. But if you've got access to surface-mount hardware, yeah - grab a handful of common size tantalum caps and bring them with you. We might get lucky.

EDIT: They appear to be 47 microfarad, 10 volt Tantalum filter caps, Marc. They are stamped with "476A" on top, and below that, "T 19X1". According to this thread, they're common on nearly all Lasever drivers, and they blow on a reverse-voltage condition. (Which certainly applies in this case!) I might just need to replace a couple of them and I'll be OK... Can you get any of this size?

Mike;

The driver that blew on you... Was it for a Lasever DPSS blue? (100 mw even?) If so, then we might be able to solve two problems! The two bad caps on my unit are cooked badly enough that you can't read the info stamped on them. But if you can still read the info on yours, see what you can read on C1 and C7. (C1 is on the power-input end of the board, just inside the screw terminal for ground. C7 is closer to the middle of the board, right behind the toroidal coil and towards the edge where the heat sink is.)

Good to hear that you've got a steady hand! Assuming I can figure out what sort of caps to install, the job of getting the old ones off and the new ones soldered in place is going to be tough... There isn't much room there.

As for the specific cause of the transient that blew the caps - that was my own fumbling with the multimeter probe. However, I still have the larger issue of the spurious 5 volt signal that appears on the ground rail and causes the scanners to flake out and the shutter to act funny (stick open or closed). Spec said this "voltage on ground" is a common issue with Lasever drivers, and he saw it on both the DPSS blue and DPSS green lasers he had. I need to do some more investigation on that to see if my problem is related to that or not.

Anyway, thanks for the support guys. I seriously wanted to break something about an hour ago. I've calmed down since then, and now I just feel like I want to barf. Fuck, fuck, *FUCK*!

Adam

[James Lehman]

This probably sounds rediculous coming from me, but try to put your mind in a better place. Do something that has nothing to do with lasers. Go get a hug from you wife!

James.

[buffo]

Thanks man! She has been trying to cheer me up. I'll feel better in the morning I guess.

Adam

[Stuka]

That SUCKS

Keeping my fingers crossed for ya' Adam!!

Randy