Ok, time to start the plog for my 2nd projector. I'll be building it with a buddy of mine, Redwolf. Together, hopefully, we can turn out to good projectors.

I was happy with my 1st pj but the layout of my living room precluded moving the sucker any closer than 12.5 feet to the screen, consequently brightness and resolution suffered. Somehow I managed to get the wife to turn a blind eye to my getting rid of the ceiling fan and mounting a big box in it's place. I say blind eye, because I wouldn't exactly call it approval.

Monitor used: Samsung 512n w/ AG removed

Standard Lens and fresnels

T15 Pulse Strike Kit 575 WATT HMI LIGHT ENGINE

Straight throw projector mounted on a sled within a larger box.

Distance to screen 7"

Below is a Before and After pic of my living room:

Here is my basic design. I have no CAD skills.

The resulting box and hopefully, easily fixed impulse design modification boo boo. Looks good. The bottom angle saves me 2 inches, but not enough room for lens focus or the lcd guts. Oops.

I'll build around the cut.

Some other angles on the box -

I'm using the same 120 volt Radio Shack fans. I'm a believer in overkill when it comes to safety and the more air flowing through this puppy the better. Plus, they're quiet. They never bothered me when they were right behind me. I doubt I know they're there in a box on the ceiling.

The beginnings of my lcd and fresnel mounts.

Hard to see in this pic, but the rear fresnel and lexan base is elevated just over half an inch.

Air will flow under the basswood and into the lamp area.

Any suggestions on where to mount this thing. There was much more room in my other box.

This thing

Spent the day in the shop - err - garage. Crafted frames for the fresnels, squared up the box and patched the front end.

Here's my high-tech state of the art work area.

Squaring it up and patching my impulse cuts.

Finally, the beginnings of my front fresnel frame. I'm going to suspend it by a centered nail on a picture hanger and let it self-keystone initially.

I should think Redwolf for the loan of his clamps. I couldn't do this w/o them.

Look'n good.

This is what I was talking about. I hope this helps.

http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=92&st=60Click to view attachment

Going for the center pivot

Your box looks like the reverse of what i just built!! I am doing the opposite as I am going coffee table instead of ceiling. I will say, after seeing what a huge difference in box size those small angle cuts made in the overall size - I coulda gone ceiling mount. Oh well, coffee table is almost done.
Keep up the good work!
Bluto

If you go for the center pivot and want to gravity keystone, just drill some holes in the bottom frames and weigh them down with some lead shot.

Thanks for the input. I'll definitely try the lead shot with the fresnels.

Just got back from Lowes with the wood for the outer box. Will build and paint that this week. The wife is out of town this weekend, and the rig is going up on the ceiling:

48" square 3/4 plywood, lag-bolted to the floor joices.

Wiring from the ceiling fan and light will be threaded into the outer box which will be 36" long x 24" wide x 20 inches high - also made out of 3/4 plywood.

I'll finish the projector build when my order from Brainchild arrives.

Just got my new bulb and mogul in. Yay!

However, it screws in at an angle and it rattles some. Is this normal?

House is completely ripped apart. I'll post pictures later in the weekend as the box goes up!

I just hope that you have a red and white box somewhere in that clutter before the wife gets back in many delays have beed had due to the wife factor. I say this whiles handing cookies to the wife so she will ignore the noise that comes from the living room.

She's gone until Sunday afternoon. Plenty of time. I hope.

Safe for a few more days I'll be waiting to see how you stain and finish it up good luck.

No stain this time. Only paint. Want it to blend in with the ceiling as much as a big ass white box can.

Here's what Redwolf and I have been up to today -

First off - the living room. This is an early picture. The ceiling fan is gone. The dog is still there. She's actually the projector's biggest fan and sits and watches the movies, sometimes running back and forth trying to catch up with what's on screen.

This is my bedroom - or what's left of it.

We're going to run the vga cable through the ceiling and it's easier to work through the plywood flooring than trying to patch and paint the living room ceiling. Hell of a mess.

The bright side is I can redo a bunch of stuff in the room I've been wanting to fix but was too lazy to move the furniture in order to do it.

Yes, that is an enire king-size bed stuffed in my bathroom.

Finally, the focus mechanism Redwolf has made. This will allow me to go back to my original scheme and angle the front of my box as well!

Tomorrow the big work begins.

Tonight I still have to sand and prime the exterior box and the plywood base.

Going to be a late night. Worse yet, I have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow.

Got the big box up this weekend. I could not have done this without Redwolf and his cubs. Thanks a million guys.

We worked Friday evening and from 10am until 11pm Saturday together on this. I worked Friday until 2am and Saturday until 4am, getting up between 5 and 6 am each morning to get my son to a soccer tournament in Katy. It was fun but exhausting.

When my wife returned Sunday afternoon, everything was as you see below.

The first thing we did Saturday after moving furntire was to run the vga cable from the ceiling fan mount through the floor joices and down the far wall to an existing cable outlet. Not wanting to cut into my ceiling in order to accomplish this we pulled the carpet back in the bedroom up stairs and cut through the floor boards. Afterwards, we rescrewed the floor boards and replaced everything.

We did have to cut into the living room wall in one place, but it's behind the screen.

Here, he is - Redwolf!

The hardest part was mounting the baseboard to the ceiling. It is 3/4" plywood. 42 x 48" We used about 40 3.5" screws drilled into the floor joices. The parallel wood strips are what we mounted the box onto.

First, however, we carefully mapped out the locations of the floor joices and where the board need to be in relation to the screen.

Should have gotten a picture of me, but I forgot. I promise I did do some of the work - I bought the pizza, at least.

And, again the finished product -

My wife actually likes it. Even used the word, "like," whic I was not expecting.

Now, all I have to do is finish the projector. That's this weeks task.

Box Details -

Inside -

The projector will sit on a sled that will move in and out on the runners you see in the picture.

Holy bat bombs,batman!
That is going to be awesome!!!
Cant wait to see it finished!

I agree! When you first described it I was a little "iffy" on the concept of the nest. But you did a nice job and it looks like it belongs there. I would be tempted to put a light on its underside, are you thinking about it?

My hats off to you! It looks really nice.

SJ

Thanks, guys -

Truth be told I was a bit iffy on it as well. Redwolf'll tell you I nearly had stroke when we put this huge ugly unpainted box on my ceiling. I thought, "Oh God, what have I done!" But, it cleaned up nicely. I was sick to my stomach for a bit, though.

We'd thought about mounting a light underneath, but the lamps I bought go up to 150watts and provide a nice warm, but subdued light in the room in the evening. So, we're gonna stick with them for a bit.

Made a little more progress today on the box.

Thanks to Redwolf's focus mechanism I can go back to original concept which was truly a Half-Baked box as in 1/2 the angles on Joe's Bakery. This lowers the position of my lens considerablely and will help with Keystoning angles.

Here's my LCD frame in progress.

This is my scheme for the front panel and the focus mechanism.

Finally,

Is there anything wrong with mounting the E-ballast in the box? I can mount it on the side, but I'd rather have it inside.

Some folks have had problems with the EB on the inside. Seems like some of them produce more heat than we thought, so they need active cooling on the inside of a box. If you build your vents to wash it with cold air, then it shouldnt be a problem. But no airflow is asking for trouble.

SJ

I'm using 2 120 volt fans and would mount it right under one of them. Should be a ton of air passing over it.

Rpearsey, I like the shelf you made for your projector it is similar to the one I made last term in my fraternity. Though I didnt care about the size I had my computer and everything up there becasue the shelf was larger. It worked out great. I also did the black light and highliter thing on the edge you could see from the door. It looked really cool.

You should at least put some sort of flashing to protect the ballast from extra heat in the form of IR off the bulb.

Sounds cool. Wish I'd had this sort of thing when I was in college. Don't think we could do this with the monitor from an Apple IIe, though.

Good idea. Thanks

Made some progress today - though the LCD frame continues to kick my ass. Don't know why, but the frame is the hardest thing in the world for me.

dude, trust me, i'm there too, My LCD Fram pretty much consists of it in the metal frame between 4 L shaped pieces of wood (2 on each side)


Definatly the hardest part for me oddly.

Still plugging along. Painting it today.

And, I may have licked the LCD frame. I say "may," because I don't want to jinx it.

Next I need to figure out how to mount the pro reflector.

I licked my LCD frame once, took me a week to get the splinters out!

A lot of folks have been using springs to mount the pro. I have seen three different spring mounts and I think there was one made from a decorative plate hanger. I think I will use a lock collar for mine if I cant use my favorite grill method.