Show off your Laser projector !

[Doc]

[White-Light]

Heya ALLTHATWHICHIS


I mean without smoke, unless it's huge you ca'nt see anything, if fact my laser looks like it's switched off unless there smoke.

I understand you see 'beauty', but i don't see anything unless there's smoke.


Tinker

Smoke only makes the beams (more) visible.

The actual quality of the beams is there to be seen. The smoke doesn't alter the divergence or colour or stability of the beams.

[gottaluvlasers]

hey kiwi-

its all just personal preference. im with aaron (allthat) i LOOOVES me some beam shots!!

i could care less about graphics. to me its the "AWE" and beauty of those nice, tight, bright as hell pencil thin beams!! the combining, the mixing, the bounces through optics makes the phenomenon of lasers all the more beautiful (to me).

IMO, graphics dont make a laser show. of course they add a visual effect to it. but, when those colored beams start bouncing around. or when that 40 watt yag kicks on and starts lighting up 10,000 people in a stadium...NOW you got yourself a laser show!

a pretty little colorful mickey mouse dancing on a wall is all well and good and fun, but i can do that with a video projector and some screens. you cant shoot around coherent beams of light 10+ miles and mix millions of colors into photonic orgasmic pleasures with a movie projector!

its all about preference. thats all.

-Marc

[Carl B]

Perfectly put there Marc.

Carl

[andy_con]

[Speculative Lasers - Dan]

yeah i like to see where the magic takes place, so i built this clear case... oh and 1.09 watt 635 on bench

[allthatwhichis]

Marc... it is "lasergasm"...

Very nice shots there Andy, Dan; although it looks like Dan has a fire somehere in his room. That's a lot of smoke.

[White-Light]

Beautiful liquid sky Andy.

Tinker if you're still unconvinced about the beauty of beams, look at this video (133mb download):

ftp://plftp:ildaswap@ftp.photonlexic.../Best Demo.wmv

Combines graphics with beams. But its the beauty of the beams that make the show.

Just gets better and better the further in you get.

Or in a nightclub setting chosen the UK rather than Holland as the Dutch clubs run insane powers sometimes so not a fair comparison:

Colour: (Strobe warning): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOZ5E...related&fmt=18

Plain Green: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d49jY...related&fmt=18

Now do you still think beams aren't a thing of beauty?

[hobbybob]

<WARNING> This is a long post, if you're in a hurry you can still stop reading here</Warning>

Hello all,

After talking to Rob from LaserWave UK i decided to put up some pictures i made last weekend of my first built. Originally i had made it for a festival i was asked to show my laser, unexperienced as i was, i hang the setup (then with a Lasever 150mW Green) above a 5kW tower of speakers. The music banged all day (not really my kind of music it was mostly trashmetal/gothic whatever, but also some "normal" rock music and in the end a DJ that played trance). When it was time to show the laser it was completely out of focus, not being able to project the nice logo of the festival which i traced by hand.

Dixiscan also a member of this forum came all the way from the south of the Netherlands to meet me for the first time in real life, together with his girlfriend. I was really disappointed and ashamed that this could happen. The evening before i showed my laser , it run very, very well and everybody was anxious (curious?) how it would look with the field full of people (3000 attented the day of the festival !!). Why it was so blurry was a mystery, since it hang all night, i assumed it was either dust or moist on the mirrors, a quick inspection showed they were clean. Had Dixiscan come all the way to see this, man, i felt miserable and an amateur.

Since there was not enough time to fix it,Dixiscan and i played some beamshows, and when he operated the beams i was able to see it, although not really sharp, it looked very cool. With the smoke it still looked like something and people still liked it.
They even asked me to come back next year, for another show. Think they could see my disappointed and wanted to give me another try, or the really liked it anyways.
I went home very disappointed, immediately unscrewing the laserhead from the baseplate, then only to find out the laser focus (collimation?) lens was loose and was turned in like 20 turns, probably by this very loud music. Simply turning it back like 20 turns fixed the problem immediately. I cannot tell how disappointed i was, this simple ring. aaaaargh. Completely $&*$)*($ed up my show.

That i still managed to break it 2 weeks later is a whole other story, which i shall not bother you with. This will be long enough already, the photos are yet to come !
But it was very stupid of me..... Anyway:
I bought a 1000mW green and put that in place of the broken 150mW lasever.
Enough rambling, pictures you want (i hope):

This is the flightcase i built it all in. It was nearly thrown away at my first job like 15 years ago. It had been since that in my storage, now i decided to use it to house the laser:


I made a door in the side, which can be closed from the inside. Both sides can be taken off. This is my specially created door which is opened, revealing the scanners:



The scanners are from JM Laser in Germany, they are Raytrack 35plus galvos.
Inside the case i made some aluminium slides , which hold a very hard board (which is called trespa in Holland). They use it in signage as well.
The board in slides:


By removing the bracket on the left, i am able to slide out the complete board measuring 50x30 centimetres. Holding the green laser, the Raytrack 35plus, powersupplies, and galvanoboards, Sliding out:

The ty-raps are used as a pulling mechanism ;-)

The board from above:


And finally my adjustable galvo setup with springs:


Since it was my first built before i had taken notice of PL i immediately started to take this one apart to built a new one, inspired by the lots of builds shown here on PL.
Take note, i don't own a milling machine, or some of the very professional equipment people use here. It looks really professional what some of you create here, and it's mighty inspiring, but i can either spend my money on a milling machine or some other nifty equipment, or put it in lasers and nice goodies (i choose the latter over the machines). But i did buy a Drill press (a drill on a stand) since i thought i had to drill a lot of holes ;-)
Lasers are really a hobby, i don't rent the stuff i just think it's fascinating to see those colored photon's hit some mirrors and then the sky and that's it. Some call me crazy. I think it's just fun and it's beautiful.

Since i wanted to reuse the flightcase for my future RGB scanner (since i has lots of space), i decided to fix some aluminium as a base plate, instead of the plastic trespa plate (what's the English brandname of this hard fiber/plastic board ?)

I found an old light box, which people use to redraw drawings, or to view dia / photo's.
It was made of aluminium, was slightly better to transport, so i decided i wanted the green laser in there. Still lots of space:


Lots of space left, but that's nice for ventilation. I had a bit of a fight with this aluminium box construction, it's rather thick and made of hollow bars of aluminium.
But here's everything fitted on the 5 millimeter base plate (thickest i could find at the scrap yard, bought a whole new unused plate of 1.2m x 0.5m with the plastic covers still on for only 20 euro!):

I used a very cheap scannerset from Ebay, only 150 dollars inc. shipping.
They work ok at 20K, but look at the ahum precision engineering of these cheap scanners:



The holes are totally NOT aligned, it's got no even spacing what so ever. My Raytrack scanners are much nicer, have a nice even spacing of 25mm from center to center.
But hey, that's probably where the save production cost ;-)
They work, but come preadjusted and all pots are covered in thick glue.
Probably are afraid that some bozo is gonna hang his laser over a 5kW sound tower, and that all pots are gonna vibrate to different settings right ? But who is stupid enough to do that huh ? yeah... i know....

Well so far this post, will keep you updated (if you like).

Furthermore if work allows i want to try to attend UKLEM in August (if it is still planned for the 30th ?) But again, officially i have to work and it's still very uncertain. So i keep my fingers crossed and will dig in the UKLEM topic to check if i read it all allright etc. and check for hotels/b&B's in the neighborhood to get a cheap place to sleep. I asked Rob (Stanwax) and he said it was OK to join, even though i am from Holland. Would love to meet some of the experts, as i have learned a lot from your information already. Thanks for all that usefull information, and if you are still reading this, thanks for hanging in, and read about my first and second built which i really liked to share with you.

Kind regards from the Netherlands.
Dimitri

[soforene]

.... I asked Rob and he said it was OK to join, even though i am from Holland....

You wouldn't be the first Dutchman to pop over and see us as Bob (Profexion) did just that at UKLEM 4.