Topic: Delayed Blanking

[James]

When I got my first programming job, I kinda' got associated with this guy.

I guess it's because of my over exuberant enthusiasm for doing everything super correct!

Yes, when I program, a little propeller pops out of the top of my head. 

And, with enough coffee, I do tend to fly around the room a bit. 

http://www.quakeroats.com/products/more-products-from-quaker/content/cereals/quisp.aspx#

James. 

[dtewksbury]

Well, I am very enthusiastic about programming, and electronics, and unfortunately that makes me very impatient when trying to get things done. So I can tend to be a bit messy. I am just about to bring the Argon/Krypton laser home for testing, so I should be able to post some color images. My software outputs six channels of color so that I can control the PCAOM. The Argon/Krypton has got the most beautiful violet, although this will probably not be visible in photos.

[James]

I have an ALC-60X Ar and a HeNe with a 4 channel PCAOM.

Unfortunately there is no violet line in my PCAOM driver and my Ar has very little energy there anyway.

But I have see it! It is gorgeous! 

I have a 70mW 405 BluRay that looks pretty awesome too! 

What kind of Ar / Kr lasers can you power at home?

James. 

[dtewksbury]

I have a 500mW Laser Physics single phase air cooled unit with an 8 channel PCAOM and two sets of Cambridge scanners. I have added a second PCAOM which is reversed to re collimate the waste energy, this gets sent to a second set of scanners that use whatever power is not being used in the primary head. I hope that makes some sense.

I have access to many lasers up to a 20W Argon Ion. We are looking at getting some OPSL RGBY solid state lasers soon, they should be cool. Obviously I don't have three phase power here at home (where I work a lot), so the 500mW is the best I can do here.

[James]

500mW is the best I can do here.

Oh poor you! 

8 lines of 500mW of white light would be spectacular! 

James. 

[dtewksbury]

Yep, it is hard to handle.

[dtewksbury]

OK, I have looked up this Quisp dude, and re done the image.

I have managed to pick up a 200mW 532nm DPSS with analog blanking. I will pick this up today, so my test rig will be able to do green scales which will be cool.

[James]

That is FANTASTIC! 

You made my day! 

James. 

[dtewksbury]

Thanks, not quite happy with blanking still, you can see slight tails on the bottom of his teeth, but it is getting there.

[Lazerjock]

Are you kidding!! That looks great.

[James]

That's kinda' what I was thinking!

It looks awesome.

James. 

[James]

Chech it out!

James. 

[dtewksbury]

That's cool, how did you do it?

Where is the screen grab from, is that from LaserBoy?

[James]

Yes.

LaserBoy has a very nice, accurate (perhaps tedious but getting better) system for drawing, blanking, coloring, etc...

I just traced over the picture you posted!

Since the core object that gets put into the SDL window is a bitmap, it is fairly simple to open and display bitmap files and save the screen as a bitmap.

You can also open a bitmap as a frame or frame set color map or color mask. Soon I'm going to write the part that lets you open a directory full of bitmaps as an animated color map or mask set.

James. 

PS LaserBoy also knows how to read DXF line primatives in either palette or true color. That makes it cake to use just about any CAD application to make art.

[dtewksbury]

Very nice, I too opened the bitmap in my app, and traced it. I have implemented tools similar to photoshop like a soft brush tool which you can adjust the size of, and stroke the image changing colors, etc. And if you turn on the preview you can watch it all happen on the laser, which is fun.