By the way have you guys been watching this :

Another Ask 960 on Ebay

A member here is currently winning but I mean comeon guys stop bidding it up so high. It is WAY to much work to use this projector for that much money.

Just kidding about the heat sheild. I may have to add a condenser to stay up with the jonses.

I would like to see the shape of the back side of that condenser or even a drawing.

Your vingetting looks vary good too.

I wouldn't even know how to draw it. Just take a normal pre-con and melt the glass on the flat side so that there is a perfect hollowed out spot about the size large "shooter" marble or like I said about the size of the 575 watt Hmi lamp.

The precon is a little thicker in the middle than the other 3. About 5-7mm thicker. Most likely because of the hollowed out spot.

I'll take a pic when I get home Thursday if you still want to see it then.

Is it like one of these?
B is a meniscus lens.

sounds good to me I live in

Yea it's like A.





I'll get up a shipping quote when I get home from work Thursday.

Pyrex is just a brand name of borosilicate glass. Borosilicate glass should be heat resistant. (basically it's heat resistant due to it's low thermal expansion). Crown glass is just "plain glass" so it is not very heat resistant (pretty high thermal expansion causing it to crack).

Those are very impressive numbers for a 120" screen ! Very nice indeed....

gs

Well the pre-cons I bought from Surplus Shed were BK7. And the description for BK7 is :



That's why I said they were borosilicate crown glass. But then again this pre-con stuff is new for me, so what do I know.

I recall discussion regarding meniscus and hybrid plano-meniscus lenses like DAZZZLA outlines but has anyone ever sourced any? Pity they'd only work with those cylindrical/spherical type bulbs though. A superbly matched condenser/lamp/reflector would be like the freaking Holy Grail for us.

Very interesting. That little divot at the rear may have been what was causing the LCD to be much hotter in the center, I’ll trace it and see if what the rays do.
It’s also not that different than this.

DJ

When I read jonjandran's response to your question DAZZ I just about fell off my chair. I immediately research back to Arizonavideos plog way back then and found this.... http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?s...9125&st=108 ...after picking my jaw off the floor I went surfing to find out how we can carve out a portion or a notch out of..perhaps..the 4.5"-6.5"fl precons. I think this precon design like yours should be seriously look into, do you agree?

There are three light engine elements which must be addressed:

1. reflector
2. lamp
3. condenser

Analyze each one individually:

1. reflector: We already have shown they can be readily made plus there are a lot just "out there" to be had; however, an optimum may not be "out there" depending on the other two elements.
2. lamp: IMHO what we need is again already "out there". This is a hurdle which Lumenlab has already had a shot at jumping and it seemed a bit tricky to overcome.
3. condenser: Here's the sticking point. Can we develop using theory an optimal condenser given a fixed lamp/reflector combo and then demonstrate its effectiveness? Sure we can. We've got a great start right here in this thread.

So, who's gonna step up to the plate?

Even a couple or several combos might be developed to serve different needs. Examples:

• 150W versus 400W - maybe even a mid-wattage in the near future?
• small panel versus large panel (~7" versus ~15-17")
• other?

Someone, somewhere has the tooling to manufacture the condenser jonjandran is using. Can we find them?

Just to reiterate. I am using the precondensor from the Proxima 9100.

The proxima's light engine was a double folded design. There was the light, the pre-con, a thick curved piece of glas, then another thick curved piece of glass. The 2 curved pieces had the top/bottom portion cut off , and they were placed very close to each other and close to the pre-con as if they were spooning . I tried the light engine all together in the Ask projector but the focal length was WAY off. I took out one curved glass and it improved , then the other and it was close to perfect. That's when I realized I could use the pre-con. So I disassembled the light engine from the Proxima 9100 and adapted it to fit the Ask light engine.

I'll get pics as soon as I get back home.

I'll be happy to help with any info that is needed.

Those details are much appreciated. What seems most important to me is your demonstration of the lumen levels which may be achieved with a novel configuration of the three elements mentioned. I personally never expected you to achieve quite the brightness you have measured (but I'm no expert by any means) and my hat is off to you. That said, I'm quite happy with the levels my 'average' DIY projector is putting out but would be even more happy to "downgrade" to a 150W lamp while perhaps maintaining or even increasing my lumens. We've seen plenty of examples of impressive achievements made by other members and yours is yet another leap in getting truly impressive lumen levels while hopefully retaining acceptable contrast levels, etc. And we must keep in mind gains are often accompanied by losses - like your center hot spotting. Still, nice work - it's stuff like this that keeps it interesting around here.

This is my favourite thread at the moment. Loving the developments being made here. Thanks for all the info!

Ah, I see. Looks like crown glass has a broader definition than what I first thought. According to Wikipedia... "As well as the specific material named "crown glass", there are other optical glasses with similar properties that are also called crown glasses. Generally, this is any glass with Abbe numbers in the range 50 to 85."

Borosilicate glasses have different %'s of boron oxides. BK7 has some which reduces it's thermal expansion, but not as much as a pyrex or borofloat borosilicate.

I purchased a BK7 lens for messing around with, but the FL was too long for my application... glad to know that it's not "that" heat resistant.

here, here.....hear, hear?......ying/yang?..

Hey do you think you could post/send me a picture of that 10" lcd and the stuff that goes with it like the pin out? If you get sa chance, if not its no big deal.

The pinout info is in the Pdf manual here :

http://www.askproxima.com/service/Impressi...ads/960engc.pdf

And here is some more info here :

http://pinouts.ru/Home/ask_propjector_pinout.shtml

I can get pics tomorrow night for you.

Wow this is just what I was looking for! This is going to be a great panel for first projector! Do you have that remote as well? Does that remote even do anything for the panel now that i think about, because it does focus and keystoning so that wouldnt be with the panel right (that keystones with the lens right?). Anyway I can't wait to get a hold of the panel and thanks for your help!! Oh yeah what do you think the responce time on this is?

Response time is 30ms. And it is a Native 1024x768 Lcd.

Keystone and focus was done with the projector and not the lcd.

I don't have the remote but you can control everything with the Osd board And they show up on Ebay now and then.


Look what I dug up:
http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14490

Wonder what happened with this ?

That makes me wonder how much of the stuff we do has already been done before. Forums are very hard to organize. It is just a giant pool of information.

Funny you should mention my ASK retrofit, I had put it on hold till i found a decent high res LCD that would fit, these ask projectors are very small inside.

I have two ASK 960's at the moment, one whole and one stripped bare.

The bare one I am retrofitting with a 10.6 LCD and MST board, just waiting on the last parts to arrive, namely the 150 watt CDM lamp and G12 Bulb, I changed from a dual ended setup as its easier to build using the G12 base.

Once things start going together I will post some pics.

The only downside to the ASK 960 shell is that where the handle is, it dips into the internal space 35mm so you end up with just over 190mm of vertical clearance right where the LCD would go.

Im also planning on cutting a new hole for the Lens so it is as strait a path as possible.

DRJ

That's because the Ask Impression 960 uses a 200mm rear fresnel. So the lcd can go farther back.

I swear everytime I am happy with my projections, you people do something like this!
Good job jonjandran!!!
I have been watching this from the beginning, and I must say those numbers are what we are all hoping for.
Hopefully Durachko is right and we can find the right combination of the 3 lightgate components.
Keep up the good work and keep helping me spend my kids inheritance!

I still don't see a lot of difference in a ray trace of the cup idea and that of making a flat spot on the other side of the lens like in the past thread.

http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?s...st&p=155697

Both systems will make two focal points.

The main problem I had with the flat spot idea is the flat area was not was not perfect but the main problem was the edge between the flat spot and the rest of the lens could be seen in the final image (A smother finish might have fixed that). I don't see why the cupping of the fat side of the lens would not have the same problem of making a "ring" in the final image.

I would have tried the cup idea if could have come up with a way to make a nice smooth cup in hard glass.

Hey did you get those pictures of the LCD and the total price yet? If not dont worry about it im not in a big hurry

I didn't get a chance to yet.

But it's in this pic here

First for the Lcd. It seems as if I made a critical blunder and tossed the OSD board. So the lcd is pretty much useless as it can't be turned on or controlled.

Second for the pre-con. These things are incredibly hard to photograph. It started off with "Work It, yes yes yes" then "No no no"....

But here are some pics. The first 3 of my current light assembly.

Now here is the hard to work with precon. I guess it could be a meniscus lens. I really can't tell from a drawing what the meniscus lens is supposed to look like. And from the pictures that I've found, none of them look like mine. They are all very thin and not fat.

It has a 68mm diameter and a 25mm depth.





And this last one is to show how far the lamp can fit inside the precon. As you can see it almost can fit the whole radius of the lamp inside the precon. Which makes the hollowed out spot on the precon about 8-9mm deep.

And here is part of the Lightbox from the Proxima 2100 projector, minus the precon of course.



And here is a pic of the 2 extra lenses I removed from the Proxima Lightbox.

Positive meniscus or concave/convex. The current precons we are using is the popular plano/convex.

Serious thanks for the pics jonjandran Now, if we can just find out what focal's each lens are at. Sorry if I miss this but have you figured out what focal is your collimating freZnel of?

I'm going to cut them apart and find out today.

I've done some searching online and can't seem to find any Positive meniscus like this one. I guess it might be hard to find one like it. But Surplus Shed on Ebay says they will make custom lenses in quantities of 100.

Surplus Shed Ebay Link.

http://www.anchoroptics.com/catalog/produc...iameter&d=d

Just did some fast surfing and it's just a glance based on the size of the first meniscus you've provided. Of course we are still trying to figure this out.

Just some figures while I have everything apart.

Reflector diameter- 70mm.
Reflector Front to lamp arc - 13mm
Precon Diameter- 68mm
Lamp Arc to Precon Back - 8mm

Can you test the focal length of the precon with the light test ? If so the precon seems to have a focal length of around 150mm.

Awe man that sucks. Oh well thanks anyway I just have to go for the hi-def 10.6" for my first one then. That might also give me a controller to test that 7.2 panel.

How about something like this:

http://www.surplusshed.com/pages/item/l4386.html

short(er) FL and the diameter seems to be pretty good... only thing is material... doesn't say pyrex so i'd assume it'd crack w/ a 575w lamp... likely not with the 150w...

Ok fresnel results are in. I split the fresnel apart and measured.

They are a 220mm/330mm combo.

I tried a makeshift split setup and it seems that the uneven blacks are still there. Of course this is with misaligned fresnels and a tilted lightbox/fresnel combo. So we'll have to see when I get the real deal setup if the uneven blacks disappear.

I want one of those reflectors and a pre-con .
The Proxima in purple and pro reflector in green.
Click to view attachment
Unfortunately the pro reflector wasn’t designed with pre-cons in mind.
There is a two fold gain when using a pre-con and reflector that are matched. Not only do you gain from the pre-con collecting a wider angle of light from the arc you also gain from a deep enough reflector.
Then there’s the meniscus lens which adds to the efficiency of all this, mainly in surface reflections. Having a concave rear surface means less light is reflected from large angles. Proxima have used a second meniscus, I presume, to match up with the fresnel of that model. What were the dimensions of the LCD in the 2100?
Does Proxima have a spare parts division?

DJ

It was a 8.4" diagonal lcd. It was interesting because the light went throught the precon, another precon, another precon, bounced off a mirror , then another mirror , then it went through the Lcd/fresnels , then the triplet and then another mirror. An incredible waste of light.

I don't know about spare parts ?

An 8.4” makes sense. The problem with meniscus lenses is that small FLs can’t be made because of the surface curvatures. They have stacked the lenses to condense the light enough to just cover the 8.4” LCD. That's why the single lens works with the 10.6 where as the 8.4 uses the extra lenses to further condense the light. I find it odd that they used three lenses though. I would have thought that two would have been enough unless they have used a longer fL rear fresnel.

I just noticed this . I am actually using the reflector from the Ask right now which is a 70mm reflector. The reflector from the Proxima Dp9100 is a 50mm reflector that I haven't tried yet.

Wonder if it would make a difference.

I'll give it a shot, but I'm now waiting on my 220mm/330mm fresnels from Lumenlab. They are slower than i remember them to be.

Larger is generally better but not always. It really depends on the angle it can reflect. What are the dimensions of the two reflectors, diameter and depth of the reflective surface?

DJ

Perhaps a condenser triplet?

Part of the problem with really short fl and single lens is chromatic distortion. They may have been able to get by with two but went with three to keep the distortion down. Before Elkin found a girl he has lots of bluing of the outside with some of the shorter fl condenser.

I bet that condenser is not cheep but I would like one too.

The smaller LCD is starting to show why all the PJ makers started to go with a reflector system when it start to become a real pain th get supper short FL with glass.

The HMH 575 SE lamp and a 10.6 should work fine with a reflector system and it might deal with the heat a little better.

It’s possible but I tend to think that any gains in chromatcs from this approach would be limited by what the fresnels introduce them selves. I’ve tried using fresnels to shrink collimated light from a large beam to a smaller for retrofitting a 400W MH into a commercial projector. The chromatic aberration prevented it from working.

DJ

oops didnt know that anyone else was bidding on it. um my bad. oh well.

i really like how youve done this projector jonjandran.

how hard is it to retrofit the 10.6 hd lcd into this projector

It's not easy by any means. You have to cut the Lcd frame on each side. Then you need to add 1" to the top and bottom of the frame because the 10.6" is thinner and you have to fill the gap. I used 1" aluminum strips from Lowes and screwed it onto the frame.

Then you need to remove the controller. You have to wire the Eballast to the 12v through the switch so it will turn off/on with the switch. You have to wire the fan to a attic thermostat so it will stay on after the projector is turned off. You have to add the OSD board and add buttons to make it work.

You have to mount the new controller and wire it to the 12v so it turns on/off with the projector.

And probably more that I forgot. It's quite complicated. At least 10-15 hours of work or more.

well i like a little challenge ya know. keeps me busy lol. the only part that seems weird in what you said is this "You have to wire the Eballast to the 12v through the switch so it will turn off/on with the switch." and this "You have to add the OSD board and add buttons to make it work."

is the OSD the board for the new lcd???

Yes the Osd is the On Screen Display board that is used to adjust the new controller. It will need to be mounted on the case and that takes a little work.

If you plan on using the Eballast , it is turned off/on with a 12v switch. So you will need to wire the eballast to 12v that will turn on/off with the projector to turn the eballast on/off.

ok thanks. if i can even get 350 to 400 lumens i will be happy. lol. i watch and download a bunch of movies lol.