It seems like I'm "third time lucky" with my latest monitor. ^_^

I bought an LG Flatron 15" LCD Flat Panel Monitor L1530S off of eBay for $200 (Canadian) and it's been an amazingly easy strip-down compared with the two Liquid Video monitors that I destroyed. There were no FCC issues.. in fact there are no FCC cables at all in this montor, which should make it very easy to position the control, switch and power supply boards within the case.

I've tested the torn down monitor and everything is working perfectly. Next step will be removing the anti-glare. I've read elsewhere that the AG is rag-able and that there is AG on both sides of the LCD. I'll be giving it a try this weekend.

I've bought the S15 Lens Kit, 120V Pulse-Strike Light Kit and Pro Reflector from the labs.

Once I have the AG out of the way I'm going to start laying out where everything will sit inside of the box. I'm likely going to use some kind of PVC tube and drawer glider setup for the focusing mechanism. The rest of the box is undecided right now. I'm thinking of trying to build some kind of modules-on-rails set up with the light engine, LCD + frenels and the triplets each in a seperate module. The modules would then be mounted onto a support 'skeleton' with a skin of some kind around everything.. perhaps a bellows made of a high temp fabric or/and board material.

And of course some kind of cooling system.

Once it's working I want to suspend it from the ceiling and have a computer hooked-up to it. The computer will have video in for cable TV and games.

Good to see you back in action!

Nice to hear that you had better luck with different LCD. Now that you are back, I am anxious to see your progress with building of the PJ. I still don't know how mine will turn out to be when I have my 16-pin extension and connect it.

Since I have little to work on today, I've spent my morning at the office using Illustrator to rough out a projector layout concept. Here's what I've ended up with, going by the measurements for the fresnels, reflector, light source, etc. off of the Lumen Labs store.

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The brown box is to indicate the size of a Kartotek box from Ikea, which I'm vaguely considering using for the main part of the case. As you can see the triplet would be outside of the front of the box. I'm thinking of making a bellows, like an old-style camera, to fill in the gap and also provide 'wiggle room' for focusing.

Has anyone else considered the Kartotek box..?

Dropped by the local Ikea but was unable to find the box I was looking for.. partly because I'd forgotten to write down the name of it. *urf* But also, as I've just found out on their website, that store didn't have any in stock anyway.

I've refined my idea of what the internal layout might look like.. though it's all up in the air until I've got my hands on all the components and can start fitting them together in the real world.

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I picked up the Ikea "Kartotek" box this weekend, after a lot of messing around and driving a complete circle arount the GTA going from store to store. (I did check their online stock availability, but apparently it's not reliable.)

After assembling the box and taking some measurements I've tweaked the layout design in Illustrator and.. well.. the box just isn't big enough. Close but no cigar. Guess I'll use it for storing tools and stuff in the back of my car instead.


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I've also started the rag soaking process to remove the AG from my LCD. I put damp paper towels, and a sponge to act as a water resevoir, onto the LCD last night. This morning it still hadn't had any affect on the AG film, so, looks like I'll be leaving it through the day and taking a look at it when I get home tonight. Hopefully the long soak won't damage the LCD's other layers. I've been -very- careful to keep the water away from the edges so it shouldn't be leaking into any other layers. *fingers crossed*

Please be very careful with the soaking I overdid mines and ended up taking off the ag and also some of the corners of my polrizer just be careful not to oversoak that baby. Ond and illustrator was a good choice for your mock ups being able to work in proper scale is a good thing.

I did manage to oversoak a little bit.. took up a tiny bit of the polarizer in one corner, but it's not in the image area so.. whew! That was close! I'll be taking off the other side's AG this evening.

I'm pretty happy with Illustrator, aside from the 1px wide border throwing things off a tiny bit. I'm using 1px = 1mm in the real world. There's a 3D CAD program for Linux that I'm going to have a look at for doing more refined designs.

This morning I tried out some advice that my husband gave me, and rotated the light 45 degrees. This lowers the center-line of the light path far enough that all of the lenses and the LCD will fit inside of the Kartotek box, except at the sides.

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Having to cut through the sides and adding in framework to support the lenses might actually be a good thing.. aside from having to be careful not to throw the box out of true. I'd like to build it so that I can easily remove the lenses and LCD for dusting and there's also the need to have some kind of control rig for keystoning, which might be easier with the edges of the front fresnel sticking outside of the box.

Hrm... have to think about this some more.

I manage to remove the front AG film from my LCD last night. I had oversoaked a little bit and peeled up a little bit of the polarizer as well, tearing a small piece off of one corner. Luckily it's such a small piece that it seems to be outside of the usable screen area, so it shouldn't be an issue. I hooked everything up and ran the LCD for a bit, checking it over visually, and everything still seems functional. (Aside from that lil corner.)

I'm rag soaking the other side now and will be peeling off the back AG film this evening.

am-m. What is the material that you ae going to use for the bellow? It has to be stiff enough to support the triplet. Old cameras with this kind of bellow have a seperate metal frame for supporting and focusing.

Hi dethatd! Actually I've not thought that far ahead yet, though I've vague notions of having springs that pull the lens platform towards the main case of the projector and a pair of scissor-like jacks on two sides of the lens which act to push it away from the case. A pair of adjusting screws on each jack would allow me to push the lens away from the box, or let it be pulled towards it.

I'm not sure if that would work.. there's a lot of design and testing to be done yet. ^_^

It looks like you might run into the same problem that I had with my original design when I wanted to use a folded hood. An idea that I think might still work is to use lack out cloth as a backing with a dark cloth over it. It would be lightweight and block out the light.

Last night I stripped off the back side AG layer. I'd left it soaking for about 18 hours, but it was still tricky seperating the AG from the polaizing layer.. ended up using an x-acto knife to very carefully lift up a corner of the AG. Once I had an edge up it was pretty easy to remove.

I reconnected all the LCD components, booted it up on my PC and it's still alive! Woo!!

Hopefully the light, mogul and ballast will arrive soon. Those are the last major components for my projector, aside from the cooling.

I'm still working on the layout of the box, trying to work out where everything will go before I get started. Think it's about time I make a trip to Home Depot and Canadian Tire to browse around a bit, get some ideas about what hardware might be useful.

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I've added in the "firewall" which seperates the light from the lenses, eventually there'll be a fan above and below the light itself to vent the hot air. There'll also be a fan venting the air from the rest of the case.

At the front, those grey bars represent drawer slides and they're only a very rough idea of how they might fit, since I don't have slides on hand to get details about their width and length. They'll be supported by brackets on the inside and there'll be hand screws on the outside that will tighten to hold the slides in place.

For the ballast and 12v power supply (for the fans) I'm planning to construct a seperate box, which will be down on the floor with a bundle of cords reaching up to the projector's box, which I'm planning to have hanging from the ceiling. Keeping it outside of the projector will help simplify the interior design and lighten the load.

Hopefully there won't be a problem with using a longer than typical run of wire between the light and the ballast. *fingers crossed* Has anyone tried it..?

After looking around a bit I can't find any drawer glides, for the focusing mechanism, that are short enough.. the shortest around seem to be in the 12" range, which is about 6" too long. *urf*

It's time for a trip to the a surplus hardware/electronics shop to see if I can find anything useful in the dusty bins of junk.

Just cut it in half with a hack saw or a dremel. You can save the other one for your second PJ.

They don't make them that small you have to cut one down.

Can you even cut this kind of slide in half..?

Lee Valley Tools: Slim-Line Drawer Slide

It looks tough but I can saw thru it in less than 5 mins. I did mine. You would want to disassemble it first and cut one rail at a time. Hey I can cut my spare one (12" long) that I don't use and send to you if you like.

Why saw anything, just buy smaller ones?

Here are some that I found on google:

Mini drawer slides

I cut mine with a jig saw,took less than 5mins.Other than that,I would recomend a dremmel with a cutting wheel.Either way,its not a big job.Just separate the pieces first,and clean thoroughly before re-assembling,the last thing you need are metal particles jamming the meechanism!
Cheers P

I'm back! :)

I've been working, off and on, on my projector; planning, buying parts, buying other parts when those parts didn't work, etc. Lately I've been getting close to having the power supply together and I thought I'd show where it's at and ask some questions about the Lumenlabs ballast.

First, here's what I have put together:



This wooden box contains the Lumenlabs ballast for the light, the power supply for the LCD and a 12v transformer for the fans. It has a fuse and two switches, one for the fans and LCD and one for the light. The switch for the light is only enabled when the switch for the fans/LCD is switched on. I havn't used a thermal switch for the fans, so it's up to the user to ensure that the fans stay on long enough after turning off the light.

Here's my questions about the ballast: The schematic diagrams I've seen here on the forums show the ballast as having a red (live) and a blue (neutral) wire.. mine has a red and a black wire. Black is usually the live wire, isn't it..? So.. do I consider red to be live or black? Also the schematics show the power out wires as blue and red, and mine just has two blue.. does it matter which way around they are wired into the mogul base?

Okay, disregard my questions 'bout the ballast; I found a post on the forums that explained it. Either blue out wire is good for either side of the mogul.

So, without further ado...



I think I hurt my eyes a tiny bit, from the reflected light, before I shut it down.. man this thing pumps out a lot of UV! Can't wait until it's safely hidden behind the case of my projector and I can run it without fear of burning my retinas. >.<