I don’t have much time tonight but just wanted to give a quick update. Spent the afternoon working on the centering ring issue and nkresho’s idea is a far better idea for this situation I think, the end result could in fact be better then what I first panned.
I really like the materials I ended up with and while it takes a fair amount more labor, well thats what family is for when the skill level is low right? lol
I got some pictures of the stack of stuff, think small refrigerator sized pile of stuff. I will try to post them tomorrow.
What worries me is when they are spread out all over the place and then shipping. I never even thought about boxes for this many large items. That could prove a challenge. I am working through them though.
The lux meters will hopefully be here at the end of the week, possibly early next week. I want to have everything ready for calibration when they show up.
I assume you will add a bit of glue to the main pieces of pvc pipe so it can’t be taken apart. If it is, then the diffusers might get rotated and lose it’s calibration.
The inlet section that is aimed upward I can see leaving unglued. Rotate it flat for shipping and have a mark where it should be rotated 90° to face upward again.
These should not need much packing material as the pvc is so robust. Just wrap the meter and centering rings well and put it in the center.
Well, I am 4 hours in at the laser cutter so far, think I have about 1/8 of them cut at this point. Took me a few hours to get the settings figured out and now I am having to run it at 15% speed which takes for stinking ever for each cut.
I am really liking this new setup, even more then the first setup.
Thanks for all your work on these TA. I’m sure by the time its over you will have decided you charged way too little for them We’ll be very grateful though.
On the glue situation, I know they’ll have to be glued some in order to keep things lined up for calibration. That’s fine, good even. I want mine to stay together. But I do hope any of the “vertical” pieces can be left loose so they can rotate down for storage. I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t have a good place where I can leave mine out all the time. I’ll need to be able to fold it up and put it away…somehow. If at all possible.
So ended up being a little under 11 hours total, wow, talk about a lot more work then I expected. Didn’t even finished, still got to go cut a few more sheets but they were closing.
Here are the pictures I took yesterday. First you can see the ever growing pile that will become these spheres. I just moved them out into the open.
Another shot that also shows the samples I pulled out for testing.
What I spent all day laser cutting today, I will try to get some after shots later.
The results of my work yesterday to prepare for the centering rings.
How accurate is this compared to a professional calibrated integration sphere?
Also afaik nobody has tested the HS1010A against a real high quality luxmeter, so it’s hard to know if the numbers it’s giving are correct, especially with different colour temperatures.
I have interchanged it with my LX1330B meter several times when I was setting up the sphere and the readings were always within a few percent.
I just did it again now to confirm my earlier tests and just holding the meter in the hole without a good seal it was reading about 5% low from 13 lumens up to the 1100 lumens of the test light, which is expected since it was not sealed into the PVC like the hs1010A. Confirming my earlier results, the HS1010A is a perfectly acceptable meter.
I stuck with the HS1010A because it was much much easier to mount to the PVC and it was simpler to use.
I have both but I have used the HS1010A in my own sphere since I finished it. I do not regret that decision at all.
Far as accuracy vs a $10,000 ANSI sphere, no idea, I don’t have one.
If you have a real ANSI calibrated sphere I would gladly send you a sphere to professionally calibrate it so we can find out.