From: jlange%radian@natinst.com (John Lange)
Subject: Re: Lasers/collimated light in RGB?
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 00:20:30 GMT
Organization: Radian Corporation, Austin, Texas

Hi all,

I stopped by Lightwave Research yesterday and got their advertising 
literature.  Although I didn't physically see any equipment, the 
literature is good enough to tell me what I was looking for.  Their 
products are described below.  First, however, I wanted to say that
I've learned a bunch from this thread and now have some more 
questions.  Sorry for these additional neophyte questions - I've never 
worked closely with a powerful laser before :-).  First, is it at all 
possible to do an outdoor laser show during the day, perhaps using a 
huge thin smoke filled enclosure with a clear front face?  If it is 
possible, how much extra power would be needed from the laser(s)?  Is 
it possible to use some semi-opaque material such as a thin cloth and 
put the laser(s) behind the projection to make it more visible during 
the day? Next, beam dispersion is apparently around 1mrad for HeNe and 
Argon lasers.  This is of course very slow dispersion, but if one wanted 
to transmit the beam a long distance and retain the entire cross-section, 
can collimating lenses correct for the problem or do they make the 
problem worse?  Lastly, how efficient are HeNe, Argon, and Krypton
lasers?  I know they are low efficiency, but how low???  One last
question - is there any good way of modulating the intensity of the
laser(s) during a laser show?

To get the literature for Lightwave products, you should call 

High End Systems
2217 W. Braker Lane
Austin, TX 78758
Ph. (512)836-2242

These are the marketing folks for Lightwave Research I think.  Anyway,
they offer a variety of lighting equipment including color selectable 
pin-spotlights, multiple bulb arrays of flashlamps and spotlights, fiber
optic curtains (for a stary effect), fog machines, dimmers, controllers,
a laser emulation system, and one actual laser system.  Their equipment
looks very nice and well suited for the club scene or concert tours.
The laser emulation system (the "emulator") appears to be best suited for 
short distances where dispersion isn't a problem (or for special effects 
when beam dispersion is desired).  Their laser system (Viper) is capable
of some pretty neat stuff - it has dual 5mW HeNe lasers in colors of
red, yellow, green, or orange (the yellow, green, and orange are uncommon
for HeNe but are possible - some are also offered by Edmund Scientific -
1-609-573-6250; be warned, they aint cheap).  The Viper system doesn't
have an especially large memory for patterns, etc. but it is programmable
for small patterns.  Unfortunately, a price list was not included with 
the Lightwave literature I got.

The laser emulator is not what I was referring to when I started this
thread.  Now that I have seen a picture of the emulator, I believe I have 
seen it as well as actual laser varieties in use at clubs at different 
times, and there is a big difference between them.  The laser system of 
course has much better resolution and tighter dispersion characteristics, 
but it really depends on what you are interested in.

John Lange (jlange@zippy.radian.com)
Radian Corp. (512)454-4797
Newsgroups: sci.electronics