Claypaky Xtylos
Presented at Prolight+Sound 2019, where it was very well received by lighting designers (it was like a honey pot in the middle of a bunch of hungry bear cubs), the Xtylos heralds itself as a revolution in the world of motorized Beam fixtures.
An evolution of the Sharpy, it is based on a brand new technology using three RGB LASER sources. Let’s have a look at this unit!
A trade show is not always the most appropriate place to assess the quality of a beam, so we asked to borrow this innovative fixture to test it at the Impact Evénement studios, but also at night in Dimatec’s parking lot, alongside the Sharpy, of course, and the Sharpy Plus.
We also asked our colleague Jean-Pierre Landragin, a laser specialist, to provide more details on the source technology on board (see the box at the end of this article).
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The Xtylos features a design that is reminiscent of the aesthetic styling of the Axcor range, with a rounded head, a kind of smooth, matte egg, decorated with pretty golden stripes on its sides and topped with an enormous 15 cm output lens, a yoke with rounded arms and a small, thin and compact base. This unit is beautiful!
The beam aperture, from the smallest reducer to the largest “wide focus”.
In terms of safety, although it is equipped with very powerful laser sources normally corresponding to Class 4 (prohibited for use indoors and highly regulated outdoors), thanks to its optical system, Xtylos is classified as a Class 1 laser source device, in other words safe for use, including direct viewing into the beam over extended periods of time. Everyone can rest assured!
Effects with gobos, prisms and pastel colors.
The Xtylos’ beam is indeed that of a beam fixture (and not that of a laser), very tight at 1.1° of divergence, and it cuts through the air like a fine and precise blade. The light is extremely bright and intense, as if it were covered with glittering colored dust.
From a purely optical point of view, the focal length extends far beyond the head of the fixture. The focal point can be several tens of centimeters from the output lens, forming a converging and then diverging radius. This is how, in the absence of a zoom, the widest beam can be obtained: about 8°.
Prisms and frost at the widest aperture.
The very coherence of the beam is completely new and its uniformity over its length is much more significant than that of a Beam from a lamp. It remains highly concentrated with little alteration over long distances.
The dimmer of Xtylos is electronic. The curve we have plotted is quite impressive. Claypaky has mastered the independent management of the three sources.
Lend me your Xtylos 3 colors!
Also in terms of colors, the Xtylos offers completely new possibilities. The sum of the three RGB sources yields a white that can be regarded as a “full-color”. It will be up to you to calibrate your own reference white in your color presets. Indeed, the Xtylos is controlled like any other automated fixture, with a very conventional CMY library that provides access to all the power of the sources.
Some hues with both pure and mixed colors.
If the pure colors – Red, Blue or Green – are really effective, the mixes can be surprising. The color can be slightly varied depending on the length of the beam, and how it is focused. For example, it may be that with an orange mixture, a brighter and more vivid beam is obtained before the focal point than after it.
It produces an almost yellow beam, which becomes more orange beyond the focal point, becoming deep gold in the projected field a few meters down. Be aware that this is not a matter of color mixing but of a property inherent to its technology. The sources don’t necessarily have the same focusing properties.
But let’s go back to the three basic RGB colors to underline their exceptional intensity. Never has a red been so intense on a beam fixture, with a flux that corresponds to nearly 36% of the total white flux. That’s something we’ve never seen before!
The same goes for green, and as for the blue, no need to talk about it… The colors are really intense.
New since its launch, the Xtylos offers a variable white from 8000K to 2500K that, logically, must be an electronic emulation of the three laser sources . This is good news that should reassure lighting technicians disappointed at Prolight + Sound by the white.
Video tests of beams, gobos, colors and prisms
The gobos
Xtylos features two gobo wheels. One of them includes 14 fixed gobos, directly (and precisely) cut from sheet metal with aperture reducers and a few gobos – that are already well known from the Sharpy – which can sculpt the beam.
The second wheel includes seven interchangeable, indexable rotating gobos: a bar, a cone, a “colander” and a few others, all very impressive in terms of aerial effects, which can truly be used on the wide open beam (which was not the case with the Sharpy) and multiplied by the prisms. The two wheels are mixable and, by playing with the focus, you can create nice effects.
Some of the fixed gobos. We start with the beam reducers.
The rotating gobos, in “wide focus” mode.
The prisms!
Several optical effects can be used to animate and shape the beam. First of all, a prism with 16 facets arranged in a “flower”, rotating and indexable, allows the beam to be scattered: it diverges at an angle of nearly 12°. It is independent and can be mixed with the effects wheel, which has a 6-facet radial prism, a prism to spread the beam in a linear plane and a 6-facet linear prism, all of which can be rotated and indexed. A frost filter is also located on this wheel.
The prisms and the frost.
The movements of the head.
Xtylos, like Sharpy, is extremely quick. Even though the head is more massive than that of its elder, it is quite comparable in speed. The slow movements are excellent and the movements are precise and smooth.
The construction of the fixture
The inside of the unit.
The housing of the head can be dismantled into three parts. Two cowlings that cover the effects section, i.e. two thirds of the way forward towards the lens. Each cowling is opened by turning two discreet screws, hidden in the ventilation grill, a quarter turn.
The front part is held by a tab that is fixed under the plastic housing of the head. It is secured by a small safety cable. The entire rear is enclosed by a large hood, which can also be removed by removing four quarter-turn screws and is likewise held in place by a small safety cable.
The back of the unit features a complex assembly that houses the laser sources and their cooling system. It is a sealed module that allows the heat pipe radiators to protrude. The technology in question is highly confidential.
The micrometric precision it requires for the adjustment of its sensitive semiconductors and their optical path requires that any internal intervention on the source be performed only by Claypaky’s technical services. The service life of the sources is declared to be 10,000 hours.
The module containing the laser sources.
After passing through a cylindrical light guide about ten centimeters long, the light is emitted through a small window a few centimeters wide, from which the beam emerges in the direction of the effects.
The light guide at the exit of the source, with its output window, once the modules have been removed.
The large focus lens.
The internal disassembly is all done with two removable effects modules, each with a set of captive quarter-turn screws, and by unplugging a few plastic connectors from a control PCB, and two large Sub-D connectors, which are also held in place by two small, captive flat screws.
It is necessary to remove two small plates that seem designed to avoid any light leakage towards the ventilation grills. These are also fixed with two captive screws. It takes a little meticulousness but everything can be disassembled quite well.
The first module holds the gobo wheels. On the underside of the second module is the effect wheel with the 6-facet and linear prisms plus the frost, while on the other side is the mechanism that inserts the large 16-facet prism into the beam.
The effects module (prisms and frost).
The gobo module.
Both of the yoke arms are traversed by the routing of the wiring to the head. Only one of them is equipped with the tilt drive – with the motor in the base of the arm transmitting its movement via a belt to the pulley – while the other is fitted with the pan motor, the electronics that appear to manage the pan and tilt drive, and the tilt lock of the head.
It should be noted that the tilt belt seems difficult to remove without completely dismantling the entire unit… The alignment of all these cowlings is impeccable. Very nice construction.
The connection panel.
The power supply is connected through True1 input and output sockets. The output allows you to daisy-chain up to three Xtylos units on the same mains line. DMX input and output on XLR5, plus an RJ45 port receive the control signals. The base is flanked by two large handles that integrate into the extremely refined design of the entire unit.
The bottom of the base is equipped with the usual receptacles to accommodate the quarter-turn cam-lock fasteners of the two omega brackets (supplied with the unit, of course!) and the safety cable. These models of omega brackets are common to all Claypaky units and allow an “offset” clamping position.
I would like to take a few lines to express my heartfelt thanks to the person who designed and conceived this feature, which allows the fixture to be fixed anywhere on a truss without being hindered by a junction or a crossbeam. I can’t count the number of times this system has saved me. Anyway…
The menu and options
The display for configuring the fixture.
The Xtylos has more or less the same interface as the latest Claypaky models: a small bright display and five keys arranged in a circle. This system works pretty well.
The menu provides access to the usual addressing functions, operating mode (in this case, there are two: a Standard mode and a “Vector” mode), the control options, the run-time information of the unit and the sources, and so on.
Photometric measurements
We start by measuring the derating in full-color white, that is to say with the three RGB laser sources running at full power. The illuminance in the center stabilizes in five minutes with an attenuation of 11%, which will have a negligible impact on the performance of the beam. This is an excellent result for an effects projector.
Beam measurements
This is the perfect opportunity for us to debut the filter that we had produced specially for us in Japan, by Minolta, and which, combined with our CL 500 A spectrometer (normally limited to 100,000 lux), now allows us to measure up to 10 million lux of illuminance.
To obtain a higher number of measurement points, this time we place the fixture 10 meters from the target, which compared to the usual 5 meters of distance, multiplies the diameter of the projection by a factor of 2.
Thus, at 10 m the projected field of the beam extends to 19 cm in diameter, which corresponds to an angle of 1.1°. The illuminance at the center before derating reaches 137,900 lumens (122,300 lm after derating) which translates into a flux of 3,250 lumens (2,880 lm after derating).
Using the Xtylos
The Xtylos is an amazing machine. The light it emits is extremely powerful, very concentrated, yet at the same time it can appear very soft in some respects. One of the characteristics that caught our attention was that the beam heats very little, for example, compared to lamp-based beams that could almost melt materials nearby. The temperature of the Xtylos beam is lower, but at 10 meters, pointing at a light surface, it burns your eyes! The light density is astounding.
The fixture itself responds admirably well. The functions are simple and straightforward. It will take a little time to fully grasp all that can be done with it, and to familiarize yourself with the hues and effects that can be obtained. The ventilation is somewhat audible, but it remains within reasonable limits and, quite unusually, the sound emitted at the back of the head is very directional. From the front, the noise is much less noticeable.
Night-time outdoor tests
We wanted to assess the benefits of this new source over long distances compared to the lamp-based beams we are familiar with today from Claypaky. We meet at Dimatec with Antony Cals, Claypaky Product Manager, and Stéphane Samama, from Sales, who were delighted to be able to spend the night with us. Antony has prepared the three fixtures we requested in the company’s parking lot: a Sharpy, a Sharpy Plus and, of course, the Xtylos.
We use the Sharpy because it is the reference that everyone has in mind (or in their eyes, if you will). The Sharpy Plus, a hybrid Beam fixture with a more powerful lamp, is also capable of a multipurpose spot-type beam, but it is its Beam that interests us here.
Now it’s dark. Come on, let’s fire up the lights!
Tests in “white”
The first test, with the beams aligned, in white for the two lamp-based fixtures, and in “full-color” for the Xtylos. As mentioned above, in full-color the beam is not exactly white. It emits a slightly purplish light, but we have chosen to push the fixtures to their maximum.
White beams. In the image on the left, seen from behind, the Sharpy Plus is to the left, Xtylos in the centre and Sharpy on the right. Viewed from the front, the Sharpy is on the left and the Sharpy Plus is on the right.
The Xtylos projects an infinitely sharper and more precise beam than the other two. We can hardly say that it is more powerful, because we have observed in the measurements that in terms of center illuminance and flux, it is the Sharpy that wins. The perfect edges of Xtylos’ beam give it a certain advantage. It is as “striking” to the eye, if not more so, than its neighbor. The good old Sharpy is not doing so badly but is clearly behind the other two, both in terms of brilliance and in terms of “visibility”.
Tests in blue
Blue beams, same disposition as above.
The same results. The Xtylos shows a remarkable ability to amaze us with a beam so narrow and sharp that, even though it is less luminous than the Sharpy Plus, we are noticing it more. It has a much more visual “presence”.
Tests in green
Green beams, same disposition as above. In the picture on the left, seen from behind, the Sharpy Plus is on the left, Xtylos in the center and Sharpy on the right. Viewed from the front, the Sharpy is on the left and the Sharpy Plus on the right.
This is a textbook case, because we arrive in a color domain where the laser is inevitably the winner. Green filtering is always delicate with lamp-based fixtures, whereas for a laser, especially with fairly acidic and “hot” greens (a bit over 500 nm), we are in the most sensitive range of the human eye.
This is why entertainment lasers, with powers that are sometimes quite low in green, have always proved to be extremely brilliant (especially with 532 nm DPSS sources, which have been successful for years, since the arrival of semiconductor-based lasers). Unsurprisingly, the Xtylos crushes the others in green.
Tests in red
Red beams.
The two lamp fixtures are in the zone where they have the most difficulty emitting light. Filtering their very cool source allows very little flux to pass through. Here, only the Xtylos beam is present, its red laser source showing its superiority hands down.
In short, after this very interesting test, it appears that the Xtylos has many advantages, which are not necessarily tied to a notion of raw luminous output. In the areas where the Sharpy Plus is superior, the Xtylos takes the game to the next level with another technology. The beam is so sharp and defined that it is much easier to distinguish and catches the eye more than any other Beam in some colors.
Conclusion
Xtylos represents a real breakthrough in the world of automated lighting. No one knows today whether or not this technology will be the standard in the near future or whether it is a clever solution for a unique product, but in any case, it is truly interesting. It is the only one that produces colors (such as red, blue or green) with this level of intensity. I can’t wait to see what lighting designers will do with this one.
Lasers in show lighting
Xtylos uses an RGB laser source. Unlike some fleeting attempts, this is not a laser+phosphor system (in which the primary source is a set of blue laser diodes and the rest or even the entire spectrum is created by phosphors arranged on a rotating disc, re-emitting lights of different wavelengths under the excitation of blue radiation), but a set of laser diodes emitting in red, green and blue, which are blended to achieve the whole spectrum of colors by additive synthesis.
It is therefore a “true laser” source that is emitted directly without any conversion, and the beam therefore maintains some of the very specific characteristics of laser light that have surprised our testers. The manufacturer is rather evasive about the exact characteristics of the sources, which are presumably the result of recent research by Osram… We know, however, that these are three sets of laser diodes mounted in arrays, with an electrical power of less than 100 W per color. Everything is in a sealed optical module, and the secret remains intact.
The essential characteristic of laser light is its coherence. This means that all photons are emitted in phase or, in other words, that all seem to come from the same sinusoidal wave. But since nothing is perfect, this aspect is characterized by the coherence length, which corresponds to the beam length over which the light can be considered to come from a single wave.
This characteristic has two ramifications:
– A laser source is very monochromatic and this is all the more true when the coherence length is long (indeed, the spectral width and the coherence length are linked by the relation Lc = c/Δγ, where Lc is the coherence length[in m], c is the speed of light [c = 3.108 m/s] and Δγ is the spectral width of the emission[in Hz]). There is nothing here comparable to an LED source. As a result, an RGB laser source is able to reproduce a large color space, which is very well suited for video projection but may not be sufficient in lighting – we will see why later on.
– Interference occurs inside the beam, especially when the light is very coherent. This causes the beams of laboratory lasers and the images they produce to have a granular, glittering or scintillating appearance. This is why we always have the impression that the space through which the beam passes is very dusty, the visible grains are not the effect of dust, but the effect of these interferences (called speckles). With three laser sources in the same beam, the interference of each color does not occur in the same place, so the beam is adorned with “grains” of different colors. It goes without saying that this effect could cause significant inconvenience in some applications.
Without any smoke, one gets the impression of dust particles in the beam.
Another result is that the emitted light does not contain any infrared (except, of course, if it is an infrared laser!), so the beam is “cool”. But, make no mistake, it is a concentrated energy that can be formidable when the illuminated object absorbs the radiation received (such as in medical applications). As such, it is normally necessary to take all necessary precautions to avoid receiving this type of beam in the eyes. In the case of Xtylos, the optics developed for the Beam application eliminate this risk.
Finally, laser sources generally emit parallel or very slightly divergent beams (hence the possibility of projecting laser beams onto the moon without scattering along the path) and their light distribution is very uniform. In the case of Xtylos, the light guide through which the beam exits the source probably acts as an integrating tube, allowing the beams from the diode arrays to be homogenized.
This yields a luminous distribution curve across the diameter of the beam that has very steeply ascending sides and a flat top, thus giving this solid and compact aspect to the beam, which is unrivaled by other types of sources. This particular characteristic also justifies the absence of any zoom, which is not necessary to change the width of the beam, as its edges are naturally perfectly defined.
From the point of view of colorimetry, each diode array is controlled using pulse width modulation (PWM), with the software adjusting the duration of the pulses applied to each to ensure the brightness (dimmer) and balance (color) of the mixture by emulating the more traditional controls. This is the only way to fine-tune the characteristics of the light emitted. However, when it comes to producing white, it is necessary to be able to precisely and independently adjust the power and color temperature.
With LEDs, it’s easy: you just need to have white LEDs, and you can fine-tune the balance with the other LEDs, and it’s even easier when you have a set of amber LEDs. This possibility does not exist with lasers because there is no such thing as a white laser (“white laser” is, in itself, an oxymoron), and the manufacturer did not choose to include a group of white LEDs (which would probably also have been technical and industrial nonsense).
For this reason, the RGB white is undoubtedly difficult to adjust, its fineness is limited by the resolution (i.e. the bit depth) of the PWM controls, and the software must “do its best” to achieve the desired “white” and try to maintain it over the entire dimming range. Paradoxically, having only three source colors is less of a problem for the range of colors than it is for the refinement of the whites. That being said, one could certainly call into question the use of this fixture in trying to create sophisticated white lighting, rather than using it to produce brightly colored beams in the air!
For further details, please refer to the articles in the SoundLightUp series on video projection regarding laser sources.
On aime :
- The beam
- The intensity of the colors
- The construction quality
On regrette :
- Not having 30 of them to play with on a stage!
Xtylos general
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