well heres a shot thats about a month old. not much has been done since then. having problems with heat and fan noise. box will be rebuilt (heh thats what i get for letting home depot cut my wood) eventually. ill post more pics after rebuild. FYI my crappy 1.3MegaPixel camera does this scene no justice. all colors are right on and everything is very sharp including the corners (7.5 feet wide on joanns blackout cloth). im using the basic setup with a benq 557s V2 and the EYE bulb. with no reflector the projector is quite bright and can be watched with 'some' lighting.

heres the 'unit'

looks kewl, yea sux not to have a good camera, mine are good screen shots but sorry camera. your right they did not do a good job cutting the wood huh?

and the 'guts'

i feel if i only had a little more free time i could make vast improvements, i pretty much just threw everything together, and the results actually came out pretty good. i would like to thank everyone who actually posts to the fourms (unlike me, ya i know im just a lurker), you guys made this site great!

Still a nice job so far. Does take some tweeking.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but, you DO have a cooling slot, right?

If it was in the lid, the cables covered it. Only other place it looks like you might have put it, is on the right hand side. If that is the case, the air needs to go across to the opposite side of the fresnel, not under it.

well its more of a series of cooling holes, and yes they are covered by the cords. i know when i rebuild my box i should make a bigger hole using a circular saw or something similar. i would say that is the main reason that i have so much heat buildup. the next biggest problem from heat would be the ballast and bulb combination im using, ive been thinking about switching to an electronic ballast and the 6500k Iwasaki bulb.

Kaithecat,

you should be able to put your hand over the air intake and feel the air being drawn in, then you will know if you have a good air flow, and makesure the air does not come from anyother place in projector just the air intake area.