Laser technology has advanced rapidly over the years.
Newer solid-state technology has allowed for brighter effects that are more efficient and affordable. At Quantum Laser Displays, we strive to maintain an arsenal of equipment that stays at the forefront of today’s technology.
Our laser systems feature the power and capabilities to create an inspiring presentation and incorporate:
Full color lasers combined with high speed scanning capabilities.
Low and high power full-color graphics projection with up to 40 watts of white light output for dazzling displays
The newest solid-state RGB diode and Coherent OPS lasers that provide a powerful presentation with as little as 2 amps of 110 volt power
Looking for a specific effect for your next show? We can handle it for you. Our long-term associations with other laser display companies allow us to offer a wide range of laser equipment, consulting services, and custom design work to meet any show need.
Blasts from the past
Technology in our industry continues to advance rapidly - but we can’t forget our roots!
Walk down memory lane with some of our old gear.
These $40,000, 15-watt ion lasers required 50 amps of 480VAC 3-phase power, a continuous water flow of 4 gallons per minute, and weighed ~ 500 lbs with the projector and power supply. Sometimes we had to add a 500 lb. 208-480 transformer for each laser. Hotel and arena managers were never happy with laser techs stringing hundreds of feet of water hose and 4/0 cable across their ballrooms. Then God forbid something leaks and "Lake Laser" is created. Add to this the fact that each laser head contained a fragile, $ 15,000, 6-foot long glass plasma tube with even more fragile 1/4" glass capillary tubes coiled around it. 50 amps of ~530 volts DC shot down the bore of the tube, exciting the contained argon/krypton gas into a plasma. The outer electrons are excited into a higher orbital state. As they fall back to their normal state they emit photons of light at specific wavelengths. Brewster windows at each end of the plasma tube contain the gas lasing medium while allowing the light photons to pass. These photons bounce between two mirrors at the ends of the plasma tube which form a Fabry-Perot resonator. One mirror is the high reflector (~100%) and the other end is the output coupler (95% reflective), where the laser beam is emitted. All of the water is sent down a thin glass water jacket surrounding the bore. Whew! And this is a very simplified explanation... And we all know how well water and electricity play together... These plasma tubes had a lifetime at best of 2,000-3,000 hours, though most met an earlier demise due to rough handling by air cargo or stage hands. The 15-watt white beam from an Argon/Krypton ion laser had to then pass through a polychromatic acousto-optic modulator (PCAOM), which basically acted like a very rapidly vibrating prism, thus allowing color modulation. This allowed laser graphics to have discrete color control, enabling something like the NBC peacock logo to be projected with each feather its correct color. Earlier laser projectors used dichroic filters to pass desired colors, but they were much slower and at best allowed either solid colors or a flowing color effect. While dichroic filters allowed 100% of the white beam to be projected, other colors were generally wasted. PCAOMs lost over 50% of the original beam.
New RGB and RGBY diode lasers combine each individual laser using dichroic filters, and project different colors by rapidly modulating each color laser. In addition to being much more efficient, they are much more reliable, compact and resistant to rough handling. A show using ten 15-watt ion lasers would have taken a 26-30' box truck or semi-truck. These days a show using a dozen 20-30-watt RGB diode lasers can easily be transported in a mid-size SUV.
The final component in a laser display projector, both modern and old-school, is a pair of scanners, or oscillating mirrors, one of which deflects the beam horizontally and a second that deflects it vertically. These scanners rapidly trace the pattern of a logo 20 to 30 times per second. Due to the persistence of vision of the human eye, any image scanned at greater that 12-16 frames per second appear as a more or less solid image, with any flicker starting to disappear at > 30 fps. Just like in film and video, animations can be projected with laser graphics. Unlike film and video, laser graphics generally use vector scanning and thereby only trace the outline of an image. Laser scanners can be forced to project raster-scanned images like video, but with far less detail and far more flicker. Since laser images are projected by electro-mechanical means, they are limited in speed. The more detail in an image, the slower it can be scanned without distortion. Thus the CBS "Eye" will appear as a very solid image, whereas The Hartford logo, with its Stag, may show slight flicker. Also, by nature, laser scanning requires a means of "blanking", or rapidly turning off the beam, so a retrace line is not projected between disconnected parts of an image. Otherwise a laser image would look somewhat like an Etch-A-Sketch image. Modern RGB diode lasers create blanking by modulation all colors at once to switch the beam off and on. Older lasers used PCAOMs to turn the beam off and on, or with even older laser projectors relying on dichroic filters for color selection, a third scanner with mirror was introduced to the optical path to completely deflect the beam away from the X-Y mirrors.
Early laser graphic computers made by Lasermedia used Z-80 based processors and had images and programs stored on EPROMs. One of these computers was ~ $ 15,000. Even smaller shows used 3-4 of these computers. Their digitizing software could cost $ 30,000 for a single station. Now we use hardware and software made by Pangolin Laser Systems. Their $ 600 ~ 4"x5" hardware is networked to a PC and is frequently mounted inside a laser projector. Their $ 800 Beyond Essentials software is far more powerful than the old $ 45,000 Lasermedia ZAP computer and digitizing system. Essentials will control up to 10 projectors and 60 projection zones. The old Lasermedia systems required a $ 15,000 ZAP computer for each projector and would only control one projection zone. Oh, one more thing - the Lasermedia ZAP computer would occasionally freeze up and would then project a default Lasermedia logo onto the projection screen - that is until we hacked all of our ZAP and eliminated the LM logo.