I have been asked to provide a quote for an unusual, (for me at least) use of a laser projector. A global ship manufacturer has a massive ship coming into drydock for an extensive refit and what they need is the name of the vessel projected onto each side of the ship while their welders use hammers and punches to trace the outline of the letters.
Once they have the outlined letters punched marked they will then use welding torches to build up the raised welding beads to form the letters and finally painted. Since this ship will be working in the arctic they cannot use just painted or vinyl letters as these would be scraped off by the ice buildup very quickly.
The problem is that the name of the vessel needs to be 20 feet high by 200 feet long (so each letter would be 20 feet tall). I initially thought it would make the most sense to project all 200 feet of the name in one shot as this would provide better chances of having everything perfectly level. They are pretty sure they can outline one side of the ship in a 10 hour shift.
The only concern they had was what would the beam diameter be in order to get all 200'x20' in one shot from a far enough distance back to achieve that?
I have not been able to find a suitable building to test this out on but in my underground parking lot I was able to produce 7' tall letters from approx 110 feet away and the beam diameter was approx 2" so I'm thinking that is not going to be a big problem.
The vessels name was custom drawn on "Autocad" so there is no actual font to use and I have been trying to use "Quick Trace" in Beyond which does an ok job when projected from 30 feet away but it was pretty fuzzy/blurry with lots of "hotspots" when I projected from 110 feet away.
One thing I noticed is that at a distance of 110 feet the green, blue and Red lasers are not superimposed so as to produce white. I think I should be able to change that with some dichro adjustments.
The projector I planned on using is a 7 watt RGB with DT40K Pro wide Move scanners.
Any advice appreciated;
Is this doable?
Is it reasonable to potentially have a projector running for a 10 hour shift?
Is there a better way to come up with a cleaner image trace? The Quick Trace tool seems to be having the scanners retrace each letter on the inside of the letter "O" for example and also on the outside so instead of a 3/8" wide beam at 110 feet I have a 3" wide beam.
Thanks for listening,
Peter
Once they have the outlined letters punched marked they will then use welding torches to build up the raised welding beads to form the letters and finally painted. Since this ship will be working in the arctic they cannot use just painted or vinyl letters as these would be scraped off by the ice buildup very quickly.
The problem is that the name of the vessel needs to be 20 feet high by 200 feet long (so each letter would be 20 feet tall). I initially thought it would make the most sense to project all 200 feet of the name in one shot as this would provide better chances of having everything perfectly level. They are pretty sure they can outline one side of the ship in a 10 hour shift.
The only concern they had was what would the beam diameter be in order to get all 200'x20' in one shot from a far enough distance back to achieve that?
I have not been able to find a suitable building to test this out on but in my underground parking lot I was able to produce 7' tall letters from approx 110 feet away and the beam diameter was approx 2" so I'm thinking that is not going to be a big problem.
The vessels name was custom drawn on "Autocad" so there is no actual font to use and I have been trying to use "Quick Trace" in Beyond which does an ok job when projected from 30 feet away but it was pretty fuzzy/blurry with lots of "hotspots" when I projected from 110 feet away.
One thing I noticed is that at a distance of 110 feet the green, blue and Red lasers are not superimposed so as to produce white. I think I should be able to change that with some dichro adjustments.
The projector I planned on using is a 7 watt RGB with DT40K Pro wide Move scanners.
Any advice appreciated;
Is this doable?
Is it reasonable to potentially have a projector running for a 10 hour shift?
Is there a better way to come up with a cleaner image trace? The Quick Trace tool seems to be having the scanners retrace each letter on the inside of the letter "O" for example and also on the outside so instead of a 3/8" wide beam at 110 feet I have a 3" wide beam.
Thanks for listening,
Peter