Home Brew Scanner?

[SilentShaddow]

I've just stumbled across this;
http://elm-chan.org/works/vlp/report_e.html
Whilst this is probably old news to alot of you guys its very striking to me, especially has he has seemed to have made his own galvometers!

The galvos provide especial interest to me as I count as a poor student and certainly arent going to find myself with enough spare cash for some DT 40s so when I want to play with lasers im restricted to waving them around or everybody's favourite that is attaching mirrors to speakers.

So rather then just doing what I do normally which is reading the threads and looking at the pretty beam pictures I would definately like to try and put some welly behind having a go at building a pair of these galvos. The thing is im not exactly what you would call great with electronics and that circuit diagram is just plain old scary!

What do you guys think? I recon that if I get some success out of it then I could put together some kits for passing on to other members as well.

Silent

[badger1666]

hope your clever if your going to try it, a guy called norman made a kit based on his work check out his site he sells a good dac kit as well
go here and look http://74.58.33.200:81/

[mixedgas]

look, the cost of building a elm chan is gonna approach what you can get a pair of Dt20s for.
your looking at 75$ or so in parts.

watch this seller name tomarrow on ebay, I'll list some g124s.

hyperspdd.

Steve

[tocket]

I'd say it's a hard project electronics-wise. You pretty much need an oscilloscope and a lot of electronics knowledge.

Just get some cheap chinese scanners instead, you'll probably end up saving a lot of money compared to building your own. You can get them extremely cheap (< $100) if you know where to look.

[keeperx]

i need a pair of cheap (10k or less) scanners.. where do i look ?

[SilentShaddow]

I think rather then very clever I think this would actually really carefully going through the circuit diagrams instead. It has just occured to me that being a poor university student might actually have some advantages though...

[xntrix]

I have one of Norms galvo kits. I admit it has not progressed very far, but I fully intend to finish the project. For me the pleasure is in building something myself and getting it to work.He is a very helpfull and enthousiastic guy, but I do admit maybe not suitable for a first project!
David

[Frixxion]

I have also built one of norm's galvo kits and dac kit. I must say it was extremely fun to build and the galvo's do work very well! If you've built them correctly you'll probably be able to squeeze about 13-16k out of it, but the angle will be very small . Right now I have them operating at 10k at about 40 degrees.
But all in all you might want to look at a few cheap 20k scanners. Right now I'm doing the same since I want better/more reliable scanners and Norm's just won't do . I also have built my own galvo's but to be honest they suck.... bigtime..... Can't get anything over 2k at about 10 degrees.... But if you're interested I can provide you with some info and pics?

[The_Doctor]

I have also built one of norm's galvo kits and dac kit. I must say it was extremely fun to build and the galvo's do work very well! If you've built them correctly you'll probably be able to squeeze about 13-16k out of it, but the angle will be very small . Right now I have them operating at 10k at about 40 degrees.
But all in all you might want to look at a few cheap 20k scanners. Right now I'm doing the same since I want better/more reliable scanners and Norm's just won't do . I also have built my own galvo's but to be honest they suck.... bigtime..... Can't get anything over 2k at about 10 degrees.... But if you're interested I can provide you with some info and pics?

Want to buy some WideMoves? I'm after some DT-40's so I want to sell my WideMoves. They're great for fairly fast scans at truly wide angles, but not so accurate at small ones. I want to trade the wide capability for some small-angle accuracy. WideMoves can be driven long and hard, as people have said. I'm not wild about them, but they do have their strengths, so I might as well play those up as I want to sell some. One of which is very interesting actually, they can be mounted for a 60° orthogonal arrangement instead of the usual 90°, if the mechanics include a 60° wedge on the baseplate for one of them, and a 60° steering angle for the input beam off a mirror. Advantages are a much greater clear aperture for a given angle, so you get big beams AND wide angles this way. No single-block mount will allow this trick if it wasn't built specifically to do it.

[tocket]

I might be interested in your widemoves, but it'll have to wait until I get my paycheck, which I'm not quite certain of when it is.