Look what the UPS man had for me

[andy_con]

They are far from unnecessary. They make near field alignment so much easier...

here here .

[300EVIL]

IMHO a perfect example how/why thermal grease should not be used !

Makes it look like a school-project class B amplifier I finished 20 years ago

Nothing a little denatured alcohol and a brush can't fix. That'll clean it up and keep the compound where it needs to be.

[decix]

I do nearfield alignment by planning beam height exactly to scanner-mirror height and fine tune by adjusting laser-modules slightly. Only green (the leading beam) is reflected by a mirror. Red and blue go directly onto the dichros.

[loopee]

FourDee

We want to see test patterns !!!
I don't know if you've mentioned already, but why are you upgrading? Seems to me that the 6210's are great scanners already

Pictures of test patterns will be coming and they will show why the 6215 are superior to the 6210. When it comes to graphics they excel, especially when you can display the ILDA test pattern at almost full size with little distortion (albeit a little noisy).

Decix

I don't get it. 3 unnecessary mirrors. Why waste power? Got too much?

I do nearfield alignment by planning beam height exactly to scanner-mirror height and fine tune by adjusting laser-modules slightly. Only green (the leading beam) is reflected by a mirror. Red and blue go directly onto the dichros.

You pretty much answered that for me, I didn’t want to have skim the height of the lasers to get the correct beam height and as you can see from the image below there is considerable difference in beam height. By adjusting the mirrors in or out it allows me to easily adjust for the height of the laser and center the beam on the dichros, and in line with the other beams.

The other thing is that the height of the CT scanner block is considerably higher than the output of the lasers, if I was going to mount the laser at a height to match my case would be massive.
Besides, this will allow me to drop in a newer high power laser without having to engineer up a skim at high tolerance to fit it (that can also introduce thermal issues), just bolt it in and adjust the mirror and it’s all done! This will make install the new 640nm red very easy when I get it



As a plus I can also adjust the beam angle hitting the dichro by rotating the mirror thus improving the efficiency (see image below). One of the of the other bonuses is that I can use the waste beam from the dichros for the alignment


-Bart-

IMHO a perfect example how/why thermal grease should not be used !
Makes it look like a school-project class B amplifier I finished 20 years ago

You’re kidding me aren’t you! You’ll notice that you can only see it in one spot and that would be on a scanner in close proximity to a mirrors. At this point I’d not like to get thermal grease on the mirrors; I will get around to cleaning it off when I can find something fine enough and something that can be wrapped around the scanner body, I was going to use a cotton bud but it wouldn’t get into the corner between the scanner and mounting block.
BTW, the manual states that heat transfer compound must be used between the scanner and the mount and between the amps and the base, the amps can and do generate some heat.


----XX Edit XX----
Just realized, are you talking about the thermal grease on the scanner or on the amps?
If your referring to the scanner than that's my doing, if your referring to the amps than that's CT doing, it's how they come (refer to first post)

Troy

[mliptack]

I have to add - you have beautiful cable paths! Top notch. I love the snakeskin, it makes wire harnesses look that much more clean.

Congrats. I look forward to more pictures like the rest of us.

[-bart-]

are you talking about the thermal grease on the scanner or on the amps?

I was referring to the amps, a flagship-piece of hardware at this price should not look this way. Nothing but good words on your build

[Adrian Cavaleru]

I intend to build a laserprojector.
What scanner should i use? 6210 or 6215?
Could someone tell me where is good each one?

[loopee]

Hi Adrain
I would recommend the 6215 over the 6210 however there is a cost difference, especially if you go for the high power option (more than double the 6210!)

The 6215 scanners and amps comes in different versions with varying capabilities, i.e. 24K, 30K or 60K scanning speed and different mirror sizes (this also affects scanning speed)

Do a search on the forum for 6215, there is considerable amount of info (particularly from William Benner) about them.
There’s also a post on the laserist: http://www.laserist.org/forums/showthread.php?t=14

Extract from a post by William Benner from the above link

“When the 6210 came out in around 1998, certain sacrifices were made in servo component selection, which enhanced small step performance at the cost of large step performance. From an overall standpoint, the sacrifices were good for industrial applications but not good for lightshow folks. With the breakdown in communications between myself and Cambridge, they did not come to an articulated understanding of why the sacrifices were undesirable until recently. Also, unfortunately to help foster uniformity of component selection, even the 671xx (SMT) amps that were distributed with the model 6800 scanners, had the same sacrifices. So therefore only Cambridge scanners with matched amps distributed from around 1992 to around 1998 had really great performance for lightshow applications. Scanners with matched amps distributed from around 1998 until 2003 had somewhat "sacrificed performance” (at least in my opinion).

When Cambridge was working on the model 6215 scanner, they fortunately reached out to several lightshow folks, including myself, for advice on how to get maximum performance for lightshow applications. This was very fortunate because component values and scanner/amp combinations were tailored as a result of this renewed cooperation. The result is that the 6215 scanner with 673xx (dual axis) amps, or 671xx (single-axis) amps give unmatched and unbeatable performance for lightshow applications. What's more, the 6215 with 673xx amps are actually less expensive than the original 6800 with CB6580 amps that we worked on long ago.”

Realistically it comes down to what you can afford


Troy