Hi all, Andrew here, im 19 Studying Engineering at The University of Wollongong in Australia.

I decided I would start working on a projector over our summer holiday.

Figured the best way for me to get the ball rolling would be to start a PLOG so that i can get a bit of peer review happening on my design.

Parts (What i have and what i intend to get)

• Pro lens kit (100mm 500mm FL, 220mm fres and 650mm fres)
• 17" LCD
• Pro reflector (anyone making an order from LL in wollongong or wagga area let me know)
• 150w ceramic bulb

Thats the basics anyway, only bits i have so far is the lens' but i will be getting an LCD and lighting gear in the next week or so.

The design ive been working with so far is a blatant rip of of Pun15her Ver.1 simply because i liked it so much, hope you dont mind Pun15her. Being 17" however does add considerable bult to it so i might completley change my direction. That extra size does alow for som nifty features though. Space on the back for a built in handle and wheels (Im hopping to use this in 2 rooms so should allow for easy moving). Loads of space in the front to so down the track building a HTPC into the box whouldnt be a problem.

Now for some pictures....

Overview of the front....


Overview of the rear whithout side panel...


Overview of the Front without front or side panels...


Close up of the mirror and triplet mount...


Next up will be working out air flow, im thinking of bringing air in from the back with two circuits, one through the "hot box" and another between the two fresnels, fans should be in the front cavity and probably exhaust through some gills on the side.

Once ive got my lighting and LCD i can work those in and start cutting some MDF.

BTW if anyone knows of a better image host so i can have full size images imbeded rather than the linked thumbnail let me know.

Must get back to study now.. still got exams to do.
Cheers
Andrew

Edit: New image host thanks for the tip pun15sher

Good to see u r preparing andrew. i am from kogarah area in nsw and finishing my pj in a few days. ur aim is good and the time frame u set is preety cool. hope u are set .will be looking forward towards your progress for my next pj.

Will u be making the enclosure by yourself?
study hard and good luck 4 ur exam.

Hi,Andrew.
No,I dont mind at all,I love to see what people do with it.
I love the handle and wheels setup,great idea,just tip it and move it!
Great start,I hope you enjoy it .
Cheers P

BTW: I use photobucket,its great!

You put me to shame, Andrew.

I've been mucking around for months after killing the lcd in my first prototype and i'm still getting parts together for my next one:lol: 17 inch this time.

Something you may not be aware of if you are using the 150W ceramic. Elken found he needed to use a 330mm Fl rear fressie to get his results.

Just a thought. You may need to buy a 330 fresnel and increase the length of your box. Hope you haven't started cutting yet

Good luck with your exams. My son is doing Engineering at UTS.

tamaruf: thanks for the well wishes, i think todays exam went ok, only 2 to go now then 3 months off (arent i lucky ) Hopefully i can have the bulk of construction done by the time uni goes back, ultimatley I want to have it ready for the release of the PS3 here in march.

pun15her: thanks to you to, i'll be sure to keep you up to date with my progress, im looking forward to getting stuck into it.

marto: cheers for the tip on the fresnel, just the sort of input i need. I did recal having read that and had it in the back of my mind. Now to make the light path 110mm longer, this thing is gonna be big . Not even close to starting cutting yet so all is good.

What type of engineering is your son doing? Im Mechatronics myself, bit of mechanical and a bit of electrical.

Cheers for now
Andrew

Good to see more PJ action from downunder Andrew, just really started myself, but welcome anyways, btw I don't know how, and good luck with the exams and the PJ that is..

Year 3 Civil Engineering.

Nice, one of my flatmates is doing civil/structural.

t4orce, let me know what they have to say about a 330mmfl, shipping stuff all around the world can be a bit expensive. I think they have just started.

Yeah sure, they're probably going to reply by tommorrow, keep you posted like I said, either way, if keen otherwise, we could split shipping costs from 3DLens, I ordered a 550 fresnel off them earlier, cost about $70AU all up but on the upside it was very quick..will see

330mm high resolution fresnel from 3dlens.com $39US shipped to Australia.

Works out about AU$50.

They have a 0.2mm pitch.

Yeah I know, but that's the cheapest shipping which takes the longest, I mean for who doesn't mind waiting, I ended up paying almost as much as the fresnel for shipping, but quick turnaround, so I gues it depends on the person, I myself am a bit impulsive sometimes, I admit ..ah well

Youve delt with them before so you might be able to give a better indication, based on the $27 for the fresnel and what ever postage you would use what sort of cost are we looking at?

A.Taylor,

I like the handle you've placed in the back of your PJ. My PJ will also be mobile, and I probably should do something similiar.

Cheers!

Fulcrum

Hey I'm really diggin the wheels.
Great idea.

Yeah well from memory, shipping was just under $25US, that took like 3-4 days, I mean coming from overseas it's not bad, so that would be split up between how many people are ordering, which would be cool if there were a few..save on shipping..btw. I got a reply .. here's what they said:

"Sorry to hear you heard too late.

With regard to the 330mm Fresnel. We don't really have that.

We are considering a 317mm fresnel with a 320mm triplet.

Thankyou

Sounds good t4orce, if we can find others that want in it would be great, I'm not in any hurry to get it so we can wait a bit and see if anyone else wants in.

Remdaddy, thanks for the kind words, I'm quite happy with how thats looking.

Fulcrum, just had a bit of a gander at you plog, your plans are very interesting. Definitely liking that flip up triplet.

Ive done a bit of reworking in order to accommodate a 330mm rear fresnel in order to properly utilse the 150w ceramics. I actually prefer this to my first design. The box will be slightly shorter and the other dimensions shouldn't have to change. For now I've only modeled the picture engine but as noted the box should essentially be the same as before.

Pictures

Side view that shows the light path, this is with the triplet at the extent of its focus travel.


Overview...


Detail of the mount of the top mirror board. I added the second mounting point to keep a bit more secure.


And a rough idea of where the air will flow... fans should be above the lamp. ie pulls air between LCD and fresnel and pushes it out across the lamp.


Should have some pics of this back in its box tomorrow night.
Cheers
Andrew

Great...another plog that I'll certainly be addicted too.

Interesting design, in particular in terms of reflecting the light source with a mirror before the first fresnel.

One thing to consider with regard to Elken's use of the 330, he is using it to get a more even light distribution at the cost of brightness (due to the greater distance from the bulb to the fresnel). But he overcomes the loss of brightness using a precondenser. Someone may have mentioned that already, but in my first read through, I didn't see it. Have a good look at his plog...it may take you a while to read through it all but it's jam packed with great info and would be very helpful in your build.

Best of luck!

Fantastic stuff so far!
One thing I would say,the keystoning fresnel is a pain in the ass if you have to adjust it on the threaded rods.If you can,try to hinge it like the mirrors,it will make life easier for you,I guarantee it!

Cheers P

You will want to put the hinge in the middle if you can.
Nice work so far. I really like the illustrations.


What are you using to draw them?
Apologies if its plain as day. I just cant seem to find the mention...

MINOUS: I'll do my best to help you sustain you addiction . Idealy i wouldn't have the lower fold, adds extra work and its another variable that will effect alingment but on the plus side i wont have to make the box 110mm taller, its actually 30-40 mm shorter plus there was alot of free space where the light engine will now sit due to the protrusion of the triplet, ie the box wont grow wider or deeper in order to accomodate it.

I have already read through elken's topic, it was one of the ones that made me embark on this project . I will no doubt have questions in the near future about choosing and sourcing a precon.

pun15sher: Thanks for the tip on the keystone adjustment, i was trying to think of a way to keep the center on the optical axis as it was adjusted, it didnt occur to me to mount it like this.

samuraijack: I'm using SolidWorks for the modeling, it is mentioned in the comment for the thread but i wouldnt say thats plain as day.

Update for now isint to big, ive remounted the fresnel for easier keystone adjustment. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to make this pivot as thin as possible so that i wouldnt have to make all the other slides and hence the box wider to accomodate it. With some countersunk bolts and some close gaps I managed. Also added a rough pro reflector to show approximate position of the light engine. I started to add bits of the box again, wheels will need to be smaller to fit under the lower mirror mount and i need to remodel all the curvey bits to fit the change in box height and slightly lower keystone angle.

Pictures

The latest overview...


Detail of my slimline fresnel pivot...


Side profile...


Cheers
Andrew

Your going to loose about 10% more LUX with the second mirror I would think twice about the 150 watt lamp and go with something brighter. With no pre condenser you will have vary low LUX.

Hmmm... yes i didn't think of that. I'm tempted just to build the picture engine (no box) with the 150w and a precon and see how it looks, if i dont like it i'll look at my options then, ive still got plenty of space in that area so i can change things without to much problem.

Ive been away for a few days so i havnt been able to do any work with solidworks but ive made a few choices about the directions im going to head.

1. Ive decided to stick with the 150w Powerball.
2. I will build with the 220mm fresnel in mind, initially i will use this and see how it looks. The box will be taller with this setup so i can try a 330mm fresnel with the extra mirror if i decide its nesecary.
3. Must strip AG (posibbly polarisers down the track to so i can do some experimenting along the lines of what elken has been doing recently)
4. Will use a 6x9 precon as a couple of others have with the 220mm fres. (Now to find one )
5. I need to find an LCD with DVI since there are no plans for a VGA cable for the PS3 (ie HDMI - audio = DVI) they seem to be few and far between on ebay aus. If only i had the $$ for some of that fancy WUXGA gear.

A cooling circuit is yet to be devised, i was thinking of drawing air in through a slot on the back between the LCD and fresnel but it just occured to me whilst reading someone elses post that there would be light leakage issues with this. However, since there are the wheels taking up space at the rear i should be able to add a shroud to this without taking up extra space. Air flow will likley be two 80mm fans, hopefully sufficient with this cooler setup. Im trying to come up with a circuit that uses the natural convection to.

Next update... my solution to the cooling and mabey some more detail in the lighting area.

Anyhoo thats enough of my ramblings for tonight.
Cheers
Andrew

Well I've come up with something that i think should do the trick for getting rid of hot air. Essentially what i have is two circuits. One fan draws in through the shrouded slot between the LCD and Fresnel. The other brings air in via the larger opening closer to the base past the lamp and out either side via two fans (mostly for the sake of symmetry). Both systems exhaust through the same vents on either side of the box.

Ive also modelled a small PC power supply i had lying around and put that in roughly where i think it will go, one question though, will the power supply still get warm whilst its only powering a few fans (3) because where it is at the moment has no air flow.

Rear overview showing air intakes and vent.


Front overview with vent.


Front overview with transparent side and front.


continued...

Another similar one but with a better view of the shroud over the lower intake.


Rear overview with transparent rear and side.


Close up of the housing for the fans.


At this stage all I am waiting for before i begin cutting parts is an LCD, i need to know if i will be able to accommodate its circuits within the space constraints i have around the LCD slide. I don't have the lighting gear yet but I'll get out to a local osram distributor one of these days and see whats what with that. I'm not to concerned with this at the moment as i should be able to accommodate it fairly easily to what i have designed so far.

Cheers
Andrew

Long time no post . The couple of months between uni and Christmas were taken up with the other project that takes up all my time. The UOW F-SAE racing car...



After comp was over with that (we came 3rd) i had a couple of weeks bumming around (kinda burnt out after a couple of weeks of 18-20 hour days in the workshop). Then all the usual Christmas and new year festivities during which there is no time for building a projector.

I have however finally made a start and made some good progress.


Striped the LCD, a BENQ FP71E+. Hardest bit was getting the plastic snap locks holding the front on apart, after that it was easy as it comes.


Power and control electronics, cut along the black line to reuse the housing (nice and neat and maintains the electrical shielding).


Circuit board for the controls, I'll probably cut out the button section from the front panel of the monitor and mount it flush with the box, undecided as yet. I'm going to use the speakers (disconected and unseen in photo) to so if i roll it out into the garage or something to watch some footy and throw some darts i don't have to lug speakers out.

continued next post...

After the first afternoons work i had most of the slides cut out.


A couple more half day's working on it and the picture engine is assembled (minus a light mount) for the first time.


A detail shot of the field Fresnel mount.


A detail shout of the mirror mount.

Just ordered a lamp, ballast and reflector so it shouldn't be too long until i can make a picture. I'm still chasing a pre-con, any one with recommendations in Australia give me a shout.

After adding the LCD electronics to the model i came out with some very thin pieces and very tight tolerances on the field Fresnel slide. For now I'm just hopping its no too tight on the light path and too thin to support itself.


The current state of affairs (the projector design) with LCD details final and the ballast.

I'm going away for two weeks at the end of this week so progress will come to a halt again but there should be another update before then. I'm still on track to have it done by my PS3 in march deadline.

Cheers
Andrew

Great progress,a.taylor!
Yor work looks VERY neat.With a start like this,I am really looking foreward to seeing the finished pj.
Just get a move on,though!!!!
Seriously,though.Looks superb,so far.
Cheers P

Thanks for the positive words pun15er, means a lot coming from you .

I had another solid day today, spent the first half of the day marking out all the bits that needed cutting for the box, took a while with all the curves and small pieces. Then this afternoon I cut everything out and the result so far is what you can see below (only sitting together, not glued yet), so all the structural bits are done.



Ive also designed my lighting arrangement based on some rough measurements i have of the globe. I don't have any measurements on the G12 base yet so my model isn't final just yet but it shows the basic idea. More threaded rod but arranged in a triangle for easier and more flexible adjustment.


The lighting arrangement on its lonesome.


The lighting arrangement in its home.

Tomorrow i'll get the box glued together but after that it will be two weeks before there's any more progress. By the time i get back the however my final parts should have arived so i'll be good to go.

Cheers
Andrew

Vary nice work so far. You must like MDF dust more than Pun15ser.

Is there any left to right lamp movement?

Okay, I simply cannot resist chiming in any longer. The planning detail you're putting into this design is truly outstanding! Without taking anything away from other members who've posted similar 3D plans (you all know who you are) I'd like to congratulate you on a beautiful plog thus far. This whole community is full of amazing folks from the ugly duckling builds to the sleek and sexy designers. What counts is the way almost 100% of us work together towards a common goal. Congratulations and keep up the great work. I'll be watching.

Edit: If I put as much work into computer drawings of my build as you have I'd still be sitting around pecking at the keyboard with no concrete results!!!

I am VERY interested to see this projector completed.

I agree with Durachko, excellent planning. The detail in your model is awesome, down to the fans, nuts,& bolts. I'm enjoying watching the evolution and addition of elements as you move along.

Nice work on the MDF parts as well. They look machined.

Looking forward to more!

very nice work, is the board on your lcd mount for the ffc on the panel? if so it might be in the wrong place, my circuts end up in the back facing the bulb. when you look in from the top standing in front of the pj my image is correct and normal, then the mirror reverses it and the lens flips it for the screen. I pivot my field fresnel on the ends not in the center. thats how I found it worked for me.

Beautiful work! Do you have a spare CNC machine you get to use?

Just following along is fun..... can't wait to see the finished pj. Keep up the great work.

Mate,

Looks awesome.!! I'm in OZ aswell, and am starting to plan my project... If you don't mind me asking, are you cutting all the pieces yourself or getting them cut somewhere??? I'm in Syd, so would love to find somewhere to get pieces cut..

Cheers,
Tonks..

Hey all, back from my holiday now so there should be some more progress in the near future.

@arizona, admitadley i havnt done much reading up on lamp orientation yet, my design so far is a proof of concept as much as anything, as such my theory may be somewhat lacking. Left right movement can be acheived by making one side of lamp mount shorter than the other (some uncertainty here about what effect the introduced angle would have but i dont imagine it would be too significant).

MDF dust ive made is crazy, must have been enough to fill a 5L bucket so far.

@Durachko, Thanks for the props. Ive been working with various 3D modeling packages now for 8 or 9 years so it all comes fairly naturaly now.

@blake, hopefully you dont have to wait to much longer.

@SculptorM, Thanks for stoping by, i have great admiration for your work. Alot of the detail that is evident in my planing is simply the power of solidworks, things such as nuts and bolts can be added with a single click so it becoms much easier to visualise everything.

@TESCORP, that board is for mounting the circuit board off the FFC, I have rotated it by 270° rather than just 90° to make it closer to where i wanted to mount the controller and power electronics for the LCD (save extending the wiring in between). As i understand it, as sculptorM showed in his first plog when looking in from the front and from above the image should apear as normal which is how i have designed it. As for the field fres, someone sugested i pivot it about the centre so i did. Its good that i did in the end anyhow as there are some very tight tolerances on it and it wouldnt have worked otherwise.

@swill01, Thanks and nope there's no CNC (although i wish i did, mabey thats the next project) everything is cut by hand witha jigsaw.

@TonkaTuff, Cheers , as i just menthioned i cut everything myself, all it takes are a steady hand, good marking out a jigsaw and some sand paper (perhaps a bit of paitence aswell).

Anyhoo it will be a couple of days yet before there is anymore progress (have to move everything back to wollongong now, been working on it in wagga) but it will come.

Cheers
Andrew

I also put wheels on the PJ. I was going to build them in but got lazy and found some that bolted on the bottom.

I put mine in the other direction from yours with only one foot to make the third foot rest. The idea here is if the ground is not level I could have an adjuster on the third foot to level the PJ image. I have yet to finish the adjuster as the ground outside is almost perfect. It is inside where I need a level adjustment so it is on the list. For now I just use cardboard to level the PJ.

Great work on the PJ design and construction so far, Andrew.

Also great Formula SAE stuff - I sometimes read about it in the CAMS mag and RaceTech Magazine. Awesome work getting such a good result. I know how competitive it is, and innovative ideas can make a huge difference. You're obvioulsy carying this ethos into your PJ - except the bit about power to weight

Very nice design. You have really put a lot of thought and planning into this design. I am interested to know what your dimensions turned out to be. I believe this design would work great. Keep up the good work. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Thanks Lola and Visonist.

Wont get any time to work on it in the next few days, our sae car is on display at the A1 grand prix over the weekend so i'll be with that.

Final dimensions of the box accoring to solidworks are:-

780mm tall
440mm front to back
400mm wide

still quite big but as small as i could make it without overly complicating things.

Cheers
Andrew

wow, long time no update. Never fear though things have been happening, albeit a little slowly for my liking. At this stage i have completed the main structure of the box, all that remains in this department is side panels and the cooling circuit. The light engine is almost complete also, all i need to do for it is mount the triplet but i don't at this stage have any sort of focus adjustment mechanism. Once i have that sorted i will start to flesh out the MDF and threaded rod beast the currently resides in my garage.

Right some pictures to show my progress.


The top and back were glued together first as they were the easiest to get right, a simple 90° but joint. I then glued the sides in place using the front batons as a spacers. Finally the front batons were glued in their proper place to keep the sides at the right spacing.


I then flipped the whole thing onto the bottom piece and glued that in place. I glued the sides of the wheel boxes in at the same time in order to keep the back and the bottom in the right place relative to one and other. Notice the 'gravity clamp' I'm using to keep the front down .


Once the main structure was fairly solid i glued bottom corner in place. This piece does a number of things, it joins the back and the base and it seals the corner. Both these are necessitated by the fact that the axle of the feels needs to be past the back of the base (hence the angle).

continued next post...

The problem is i lost sight of this fact somewhere along the way so there isin't enough of the angled part hence the unit has to be tilted up to 45° before it can really be moved. Even then its marginal. This of course was only discovered once the wheels were on and id put the 1.5-2 hours into sanding the corner nicely. I will have to take the jigsaw to it to fix it up but thankfully it shouldn't prove to be much of a problem.


The front curve was glued on using f-clamps and those trust gravity clamps again. As it's only 3mm mdf i didn't bother with any pre-bending, just put the glue down and clamped it in place for a bit. Bit of sanding on the edges once the glue dried and i was good to go.


As you can see here the light and reflector mount has now been added. All the slides are adjusted to where they will finally lie. It feels nice and solid and all looks nice and straight now that its adjusted properly.

Next step it to mount the triplet once that is done it will be cooling and mounting other components, wiring everything up for a test run and if all goes well i'll pull optics and electrics out and spray some paint around (flat black on the inside of course, not sure what to do on the outside yet).

On a somewhat related note i pre-ordered my ps3 last weekend, still need to find some way of displaying it on my 1280x1024 monitor without stretching it though (if only Sony would make an addition to the next firmware the can adjust signal timings to center say a 1280x720 picture on such a display). Failing that does anyone know of any hardware that would do such a thing. Another option is a video input device for the computer that can handle a high def signal, don't think such a thing exists yet but maybe someone else has see one. Of course the final option would be a new LCD those 10.6 creatures look mighty fine...(someone stop me im talking about another projector ).

Have you thought about something like this?

TV Tuner

Wow, its looking really really good, cant wait to see it finished.

Thanks Dan .

Visonist, i do have a high def TV tuner in m computer but what i need is a high def video input (eg component input that can work with HD) so i can use my computer to display the ps3 whilst my computer takes care of only using the 1280x720 part of my monitor.

Great job so far.

What will the side panels be made of and how will you fit them?

I may try to make my second box similar to yours but I'm not sure if I have enough gravity here.

Very nice work indeed!

Fantastic progress,truly great planning.
Keep it up!

Thanks as always guys.

Arizona, the side panels will be 6mm mdf cut to the appropriate shape. As the picture below shows there will be a further 6mm lip around the edge to match the 12mm thickness of the sides. The extra part at the top will hook under the side and a couple of bolts down the bottom will keep it in place. The side panel is also supported by a lip around the inside of the box (not there yet) which also stop light leakage and seals for air flow.



If you're running short of gravity (cant imagine why last i checked it was more or less constant across the globe) it can always be substituted for the proper tools .