Norxe and the P1

Three years ago, MS&T’s Dim Jones visited the Norwegian port town of Fredrikstad, at the southern end of the Oslo Fjord, and the projection arm of Barco, formerly projectiondesign (MS&T 2/2015). He recently returned to Fredrikstad to visit a newly formed projection company, Norxe.

Fredrikstadis a somewhat unlikely centre of excellence in the projection industry, but itslinks with this specialised area of design, manufacturing and technology goback to the mid-1980s, when the company ASK was formed there by a resident ofthe town. This attracted projection specialists from other parts of Norway andfurther afield, many of whom then settled in the area. In 1998, ASK merged withSan Diego, California, USA-based Proxima, which was in turn acquired byInFocus. At that time, ASK-Proxima business had an upward trajectory, whereasInFocus was in something of a decline; considering that this trend wasextending to the new company, some of the original ASK employees departed toform a new company, projectiondesign. In 2012, Barco acquired projectiondesign,at which point some of the employees elected to leave and once again start anew company; 15 partners, comprising the entire shareholding, formed Norxe AS in2015. The first projector rolled off the production line in 2017.

Thepurpose of this convoluted history lesson is to highlight that, although Norxeis technically a ‘start-up company,’ this status is belied by the know-howinvested in it by the partners, all of whom have worked for other projectioncompanies, and some of whom have travelled all or a great deal of the pathwayfrom the original ASK days, and brought with them a wealth of experience andtechnical expertise. A visitor to Norxe’s premises is soon aware that this isnot a run-of-the-mill organisation, not least because of its size. The 15partners are still virtually the entire workforce and, although they all havetheir areas of responsibility and professional expertise – be it design,electronics, optics, or sales and marketing – they all lend a hand in whicheverarea is in need of manpower; thus, if the immediate requirement is production,you may well find the CEO or the Vice-President for Global Sales in theproduction facility, assembling components into projector sub-assemblies. Thepotential for rapid expansion is there; the company’s premises are in buildingsonce used by Fredrikstad’s once-thriving shipbuilding industry, now more orless defunct, and there is plenty of additional accommodation available. Professionalconnections established over many years suggest that attracting the rightadditional personnel would also be possible. However, the Norxe partners haveelected to tread cautiously, and at the present time the company manufacturesonly one projection platform, the P1.

The P1 Projector

Hittingthe sweet spot for a particular application requires the juggling of competingparameters, the discriminators being lumens, resolution, functionality andcost. All else being equal, manufacturers generally want as much light outputas possible, but it may not be necessary, and will have implications forchassis size, heat emission and total cost of ownership (TCO). Lamps can be bright when combined, but have poor TCO, and can have lightoutput degradation, colour shift and orientation issues. LED are less bright,but have no colour shift or orientation issues, excellent TCO, and a stablepredictable lifetime. Laser phosphor shares these characteristics, and alsooffers improved brightness. Single-chip projectors are generally cheaper but producevery sharp images; 3-chip offers greater resolution.

With these considerations in mind, Norxeelected to start with a single product, but to design it from a clean sheet ofpaper, to use the best available technology, and to prioritise quality,reliability and low cost of ownership over expense. The result is the P1, asingle-chip DLP LED projector. It has two modes, brightness and colour, and tworesolutions: 1920x1200 pixels (WQXGA) and 2560x1600 (WUXGA), giving four configurationoptions. The higher-resolution option gives 2500 lumens in colour mode and 3900in brightness, the lower produces 2750 and 4250 respectively. There are also twolenses, an extra-wide zoom (N1), giving a throw ratio of 0.80-1.25:1 in lowresolution and 0.74-1.16:1 in high, and a wide zoom (N2), giving 1.20-1.60:1and 1.12-1.50:1 respectively. The lenses are fitted with centre-mounted steppermotors for accurate positioning, and the lens unit is easily adjusted, and canbe locked to the frame for increased robustness and rigidity.

There are no moving parts in the P1, makingit extremely rugged and truly solid-state. In apparent contravention of thedefinitions in the sidebar “A Projection Primer” (see page X), it has threeseparate light sources (red, green and blue (RGB), obviating the need forcolour or phosphor wheels, and a fourth IR light source, which is optional. Theoptical engine and light sources are sealed, and the DLP Digital MicroMirrorDevice (DMD) is hermetically sealed, thus preventing dust ingress and the needfor cleaning. The DMD and the LED light source are “lifed” at more than 100,000hours; the cooling unit, embodying three of the best fans available in terms ofnoise and life, is mounted at the back of the chassis, and replacement of thisunit at 50,000 hours (the only required scheduled maintenance) entails theremoval of 12 screws and takes a couple of minutes. Each light source has ‘heatpipes’ (see Sidebar, page X) in addition to the radiator fins, but there are nopumps; the movement of fluid vapour within the pipes is the result ofvariations in temperature. The power sources are easily accessible, and themain board, which has more than 3,000 components, is mounted on the top of thechassis, and is also easily removable.

Norxe does not manufacture components; componentsare made to Norxe specifications by trusted and proven companies, often localto Fredrikstad. The lenses are manufactured in Japan. Assembly of a P1 takesone person one day, and considerably less if the sub-assemblies are alreadycomplete. On the day I visited, a delivery of chassis base plates was expectedimminently, and serried ranks of sub-assemblies awaited their arrival. Standardproduction rate is 60 units per month, and the surge capability is 200. Aftercompletion, the projectors are fully tested and adjusted, and left to run forat least 24 hours; the P1 is rated for 24/7 operation.  There were five of them running in a smallroom when I was there, and I had to listen carefully to hear them. The QualityControl failure rate is extremely low, and the mean time between failure (MTBF)is 116,000 hours; this confidence is underpinned by a five-year warranty, validalso when customer staff have been trained and accredited by Norxe inmaintenance adjustment and repair procedures, either in Fredrikstad or at theend-user’s installation site. Additional support is available through Norxenet,the company’s bespoke control and calibration software.

The P1 is optimised for, and targeted firmlyat, the high-end simulation market, in multi-projector configurations. The P1is not large (690 x 510 x 340mm) or heavy (17kg without lens), and multiplefixing points ensure installation versatility. In a table of pros and cons forthe various light sources and technologies, the principal drawback of an LEDlight source is a lower than average brightness, which makes the P1 lesssuitable for some other applications. However, as the supporting documentationexplains, becauseLED produces richer, more saturated colour, the perception of brightness to thehuman eye is greater than its physically measured brightness, a phenomenonknown as the Helmholtz-Kohlrausch effect. When the colours are more saturated,our eyes interpret it as the colour’s luminance and chroma. This makes our eyessee the colours as brighter than their physical measurements would suggest. Thetheory is beyond me, but I can attest to the effect.

Although the P1 certainly looks the part, this was not the thing thatmost struck me during my visit; just as interesting as the product is the waythe company does business. I met about half of the partners who work atFredrikstad on a daily basis, their colleagues being spread around Europe, withrepresentation in the US and Singapore. I have mentioned the technologicalexpertise of the staff in their own fields, and also their ability to ‘man theguns’ when production is the priority. More than this they are clearly happy intheir work, and are comfortable with each other, both professionally andsocially. This is typified by a ‘duty roster’ which is no respecter ofseniority; the ‘Boy of the Week’ is responsible for just about everything whichgoes right or wrong on the premises, and that includes ensuring that thefridges are stocked with the ingredients of an excellent lunch and producingsaid lunch for his colleagues. A workforce of this size might be thought tolack resilience, but paradoxically their versatility offsets this, and whatmight ordinarily make the organisation fragile also makes it agile. Thepartners are all stakeholders with a vested interest in the company’s success,there is no external investment, there is no room for internal rivalry orcompetition, and decisions can be taken quickly and without the need forendless meetings. The design is technology-agnostic, and so the designers arefree to make use of the best available.

As regards new customers, there have been several recentannouncements:  RSi Visual Systems hasselected the P1 for their upgrade to the Epic Visual System for CardiffAviation Training’s B747-400 full-flight simulator; Dallara has chosen the P1WQXGA for their high-performance driving simulator upgrades in Varano, Italyand Indianapolis, USA, as have Indra for their two NH90 full-mission simulatorsto be supplied to the Spanish MoD, and Tecnobit for the Field ArtillerySimulator (SIMACA) at the Artillery Academy of Segovia, Spain. Lastly, theSimulation, Training, Assessment and Research (STAR) Center (Dania Beach,Florida) is upgrading their US Coast Guard-approved large ship bridge simulatorto include a 360o visual embodying nine P1 WQXGA projectors, eachwith a channel size of 16ft high by 25.6ft wide; (these are big channels for aprojector with a light output like the P1’s, but the strong colour saturationof its LED light engine mean that the images look great, and their electricbill is now tiny.

What of the future?  Further developmentof the P1 is already under way, and P2 is expected at the beginning of 2019. AtI/ITSEC 2017, I saw the P2 ‘concept model’ intended as a step toward where the company want to be for P2, and as acatalyst for customer feedback and input. My non-technical feedback was thatthe colour intensity was awesome. Norxe will be at I/ITSEC in Orlando inNovember, this time with a stand on the main show floor as well as a privatesuite.

Meanwhile, Barco announced in January that they were studying thepossible move of their production operation in Fredrikstad to share a newprojection manufacturing facility in Kortrijk, Belgium; in counterbalance, therole of Fredrikstad as a ‘centre of excellence’ for innovation, R&D andbusiness development in single-chip DLP projection would be strengthened. Themanufacturing operation involves about 75 employees; several months down theroad, there has been no further official announcement, but it seems to begenerally accepted that this will happen. How many of the 75 will relocate is uncertain, but if Norxe were toconsider expanding, there may be a supply of home-grown talent close at hand.

In sum, this was a most enjoyable and informative visit to a company quite unlike any other I have encountered. The name is new but the experience is broad and the dynamism is self-evident; I look forward to following Norxe’s progress in the coming months and years.

A Projection Primer

There are threemain core technologies used in projector design: Liquid Crystal Display (LCD);Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS); and Digital Light Processing (DLP). LCDtechnology is generally found in home cinema and education projectors; LCoS canalso have simulation applications, and DLP is generally regarded as being bestsuited to high-end simulation.

There arealso three types of light source to power these projectors: Lamp, LED (LightEmitting Diode) and Laser. Lamps produce a single white light, which needssplitting into the Red, Green and Blue (R, G and B) components required tocreate a projected image. Lamps are cheap, and multiple lamps can be usedwithin projectors to increase light output; however, the cooling systemsrequired can be noisy, their colour can change over time, their light outputdrops as they age, and they have a very short lifespan compared to laser andLED – around 2,000 hours, compared with 20,000 hours for a laser, and up to60-100,000 hours for LED.

Lasersincrease the life span of the light source, and can also be ‘stacked’ toproduce very bright projectors; however, green, and to some extent red, laserscan be expensive and difficult to work with, so blue lasers are commonly usedin conjunction with yellow phosphor wheels, whereby the green and red can beobtained through filtering. Laser phosphor projectors are rapidly replacinglamp projectors within the general projector market. The pure laser element ofthe light is seen by the human eye to be highly saturated and vivid. Projectorsusing R, G and B lasers are very large and very expensive, but benefit fromhaving no moving parts within their optics, such as phosphor or colour wheels.Lasers also produce a stable colour throughout their life time.

LEDs stretchthe life expectancy and stability further even than lasers, but at the expenseof raw light output. Individual R, G and B LEDs are used to produce the colourcomponents needed, in a similar way to an RGB laser projector but in a muchsmaller, quieter and more cost-effective package. New technology from Philips(High Lumen Density - HLD) allows more brightness from LEDs, while stillachieving extremely long life times. The light output of these projectors isstill relatively low, but for specialist applications where high light outputis not needed, they deliver an unmatched longevity and stability. Like lasers,LEDs produce an extremely saturated and vivid colour, which the human eyeinterprets as brighter light. Like direct-laser projectors, LED sources need nomoving parts within their optics.

As if these permutations were not enough, DLP projectors can also come in two very different configurations, single-chip and three-chip. Single chip projectors, driven by Lamp and Laser-Phosphor light sources, need a colour wheel to filter unwanted light away from the DLP chip. LED needs no colour wheel, as independent R, G and B LEDs are used. LCD and LCoS are organic devices, whereas DLP is a non-organic device; organic devices do not respond well to heat or certain wavelengths of light, such as UV. - Dim Jones

Heat Pipes

The operating temperature of a laser projector is critical, as is the case for LED, where both fan and liquid cooling systems may be used. One of the interesting technologies embodied in the Norxe P1 is the use of heat pipes, which obviate the need for cooling pumps. The majority of heat pipes use water as their working fluid; for the pipe to function, the working fluid must boil at a temperature much lower than 100oC, and this is effected by drawing a vacuum within the pipe, allowing two-phase heat transfer to occur. To boil water at 1oC, the internal pressure must be in the order of 1/165th of atmospheric. When heat is applied, the liquid evaporates. This changes the internal pressure and the vapour moves to a cooler area at high speed.  The vapour gives up its heat of vaporisation and becomes a liquid again; the liquid is absorbed into the “wick structure” and moves back along the pipe via capillary action, which works against gravity. The calculated mean time to failure (MTTF) is greater than 125,000 hours. - Dim Jones

Published in MS&T 5/2018