Finally found my card reader and decided to post a few pics of my progress, which isn't much. I decided to go with a vertical design because it puts it closer to the level I want it to project at once it's set up and won't need much, if any, keystone correction. My woodworking skills are non-existent and I did my cuts by hand so no laughing. To make things lighter I used 7/32" plywood.

Planning for the alignment of the lighting. I still need to check, double check and then recheck my measurements again to make sure everything is at the right distances, then I'll start mounting lenses and installing the lighting. The 45 degree top will hold the mirror which is already attached to it. The rear side is going to be attached with hinges and a clamp to allow for access.

My Benq 567s v2, I'm really scared to tear into this thing because it's so nice. I'll definitely be reading up a lot on stripping it before I start.

Sierra Nevada! W0000!

hehe - you got an eye of a hawk

I will be following this one. I am very interested to see your design come to life. Are you going to use the new optics?

Maybe at some point. Unfortunately I just don't have the support of my better half to go overboard on this project. I have a rough diagram of my plans on the computer that I might post if anyone is interested. I used MS Paint to make them though so I don't know how much use they'll be lol. I'm helping my parents paint the house so I haven't gotten more work done yet. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get the frame work for the lenses/lcd done and figure out how to wire everything without blowing myself up. I do have a question though. What exactly is the "FUSE 10 Amp 120 V". If someone has a picture of it, I would like to see In fact I'd like to see any pictures of wiring with an electronic ballast.

the wireing of the electronic balast is really easy, two wires on most Brown and Blue, The Brown wire is 120v and Blue is common, meaning Broen to small prong out of wall and Blue to the larger one this is for incomming current, the output is the same brown 120v to center of bulb and blue to outer portion, most mogel sockets have two wires already to brown will be to the black on the mogel.

As far as the fuse it looks like a recular older car fuse with the glass between the two end connectors. available at RS. you can see them beside the glue in this thread.

http://207.44.154.157/forums/index.php?sho...indpost&p=24098

hope this helps.

Here is a drawing of my plans. I only used MS Paint so no laughing

Your version of MSPaint seems infintely more advanced than mine

Your plans look really nice though.

You should be carefull about your exaust air short circuiting back into the air intake.

Good catch Pitman

True that I do need to be aware of that. I'm not yet sold on my current cooling design. I think it will work well enough as I'm angling the exhaust downward, but I'm considering completely sealing off the lcd from the lamp with a full piece of tempered glass. Then I'd put a second fan (maybe 40cfm) dedicated to moving air across the lcd. This might be overkill though.

Very interesting, I cant wait to see more.

I decided to go with only one fan for now and test the temperature. I can always cut additional holes for another fan, but it's always more difficult to fill them back in Should have more pictures soon when I have more installed.

My Benq 567 v2 stripped without any problems. I'm going to hold off on putting it into the enclosure and just test with a transparency for now.

It seems to be easiest and probably best to just leave the boards in their metal enclosure, after cutting it down. I was nervous about the grounding issue, but apparently this should take care of it. I just have to make sure I have enough room along the side of the box because I'm not projecting out of one end like the standard design.

Made a little more progress today. Here you can see the top fresnel mount.

Here you can see the slots for the 2 fresnels and the lcd. I've decided to completely isolate the bulb chamber from the rest of the projector with the tempered glass. I will install another smaller fan dedicated to drawing air across the lcd. I didn't do this to improve cooling, but rather to just simplify the building process. You can see the cut out left for the fan's airflow.

An outside shot. I drilled the holes for the fan (parents happened to have a hole saw just the right size) and cut out the triplet hole by hand. My projector is going to sit on the edge of a stand so the exiting air will be directed right off the edge. I did this to make sure that the air doesn't get drawn back into the input which used to be directly above it. I have since modified the design.

Tomorrow I'm going to be attempting some wiring. I bought the ceramic fuses in the middle the first time I went to Radioshack for parts, but I've since read that they are for microwaves. Are the fuses to the left the ones I want? And the fuse holder?

depends. if you are in the usa, you need 120v fuses, but overseas i am pretty sure that those will work.

also, with your cooling setup right now, i am a bit worried that your ballast is going to overheat. if you can, position it in front of the fan. at first, i had my ballast in a part of the projector with no fresh air. after a few hours, it went click and the lamp turned off. i opened it up and carefully tapped the ballast. it burned me. so, i moved the ballast in front of the fan, and now i do tests where i have ran it for 5 hours, and then touch the ballast, and now it is barely warm to the touch. but touching the ballast during/shorthly after operation is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. i realized soon after that i could have touched the bulb, which would have given me like 3rd degree burns. so take my advice and put the ballast in front of the fan.

lol.

nick

I'm in the USA. The Radioshack here only has 250v fuses and same with their website. RS fuses Am I going to damage anything by trying to use them? As long as it's not less than 120v, shouldn't it be okay? I don't know anything about electrical so please correct me.

I have an air intake directly opposite the fan on the bottom. It should pull air around the lamp and over the ballast (which I've moved to the front side from the left) on its way to the fan. Of course that's just in theory. I'm going to be watching it very closely when I'm testing it. The only other placement for the ballast would be to externally mount it.

Fuses are fine, the fuse holder is not. That is an automotive fuse holder, rated for 12v. You need one like this:

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?cata...ct%5Fid=270-739

or this:

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?cata...t%5Fid=270-1217

Regarding the LCD grounding, you should still attach one grounding wire from the main ground wire to the controller board ( the one attached to the LCD by 4 FFCs ) using one of the screw-holes..

If someone wants to look over this and see if it makes sense to them. Again, I don't know electrical and don't want to blow anything up. I'm not sure about the connection between the ballast and the incoming power. Should I be connecting something to the green terminal on the switches too?

Everything looks right but you'd run a white to the blue on the ballast incoming. You can run the green to the switches if you want.

I got my wires and leads ready to go but decided to hold off one more day when I'll have someone to help. Instead I decided to take more pictures! Yay!

I don't think my fresnels are going to be at perfectly measured distances, but after doing so many cuts by hand, hopefully it won't be too bad. I'm already making my notes on what I'm going to do differently in my next version...

1) Buy tools

Here I'm doing something different than most by completely sealing off the bulb portion from the rest. It will require two fans but was far easier on me for constructing than the other design. The glass is going to be raised from the height the frame is at right now but I'm not sure how far to go up. If the glass is farther away from the lcd, shouldn't that help keep it cooler? Is there any draw back from putting it closer to the bulb?

Finished the wiring for the most part. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Fortunately everything worked right from the start. I still need to install all the shielding and tempered glass (which still needs to be ordered)

Here is the bulb just starting, which took about 5 seconds to go.

The customary green glow...

It doesn't look like much in the picture, but at this point it was lighting up the whole garage.

About 45 minutes after turning off the bulb from the first run, I thought I'd try to start it up again. To my dismay, it didn't fire up. I waited about 5 minutes and gave up on it. I went to go see Hero at the theater and when I came back I tried starting my spare bulb. It fired up just fine so I know it's not the wiring. I'm too tired to try the first bulb again. I probably will in the morning, but I'm still confused why it didn't fire again after the first run.

Pry up on the mogul base center contact to insure it is making good contact. Next try let it try to start for at least 10 minutes.

I don't know what changed since yesterday, but the first bulb fired up after about 2 minutes today. Guess it's just a little fickle...

Very nice.

I find my bulb takes awhile to fire if it's been on in the past few moments, I think it has to do with the heat. The hotter it is the longer it takes to fire. Perhaps yours was warmish?

I think that might have been the case, although I was sure 45 minutes was enough time to cool down. I went ahead and bought a Dremel to cut my Norpro with. It would have made a lot of those other cuts easier too...oh well. If all goes well, I should have everything done for the football games this weekend!