What part is the problem?

your scanners are not plugged into the dimmer pack are they?

Of course not! I do have dimmers but they are in the DMX chain with the 6 scanners. Just par cans, a strobe light and a rainbow light are plugged in the dimmers.

It is a low quality steper motor used to drive the mirror also a 16bit driver helps accuracy but is not part of most low cost lights.

So you are saying it is the cheap light's fault. I don't know what you mean by the comment of a 16bit driver helps. Where does that come in to play in my system? I don't want to spend the money on the Elation software only to find the lights still stray from the preprogrammed spot. Jingles, please weigh in on this discussion!

what controller are you using? If I were to take a guess at it, I would say its the light fixture. why? because an expensive fixture has all components to make sure the lights will be on the same spot all the time. that's what makes the expensive. If a cheap light fixture is made, then those are usually catered to the DJ where lighting positions everytime are not crucial to anyone demanding perfection.
I would not say its the controller, becuase the cheapest lighting controller I know is the DMX Operator or copies of it, and I have never heard anyone have these issues with the board.. its always been the lights.

Sorry,
I copied this from the DMX512 wiki


8-bit vs. 16-bit
If a single DMX512 channel is used to control pan on a Martin Mac 500, which has 440° of pan, then an increase of 1 would result in a movement of 1.7° due to the 256 possibility (8-bit) resolution. Over a long throw (the distance between the fixture and the projection surface), this relatively small move can result in significant displacement of the beam. To control position more accurately, MACs and other fixtures use 2 channels each for pan and tilt. This gives a 16-bit value between 0 and 65535 for each movement axis or 0.007° of movement.
Using these types of devices on older lighting controllers would result in two adjacent channel controls being used to adjust a single movement axis. One would be referred to as the coarse and the other as fine, indicating the relative amount of movement control each channel provided. The coarse channel would allow values in multiples of 256, such as 0, 256, 512, 1024, all the way up to 65280. The fine channel allows the addressing of all in-between values, by adding between 0 and 255 to the value obtained by the coarse channel. Thus the fixture's movement can be controlled more accurately.

Iguana, Re reading your post i would definitely say it is the lights. if the stpes in the motor are to "Loose" and you have a quick snap or fade time from point a to point b u might get a little drag on it and lose the desired positions. Try Programming a slower fade and see if that helsp some?
Sincerely,