So the first step to recovery is admitting you are a DIY projector junkie. No excuses. No one's fault. You just are.

My first build was relatively successful. It put out about 115 or so lumens. I hung on our family room cieling. And it has been giving us good TV for about 2 years now.

But the bug never leaves. It eats at you till you give in, time and time again.

Started looking at the RGB led thread. Jumped in. tepid at first. Tried to resist. But just when you think you can walk away they pull you right back in! So jump in the waters head first. Spent several hundred. Gave it my best shot, but didn't work out.

So then I started noticing that my projector could use a good remanufacturing. It's been up there for a couple years. It's dusty. Lamps old. And the DIY technology has improve a lot since I built it.

So there ya go. My excuse to spend even more $ on DIY projectors.

But I already did the "standard" light engine. Gotta do something different. Gotta do something "unique". After all, my work on the high power led engine got me addicted to all the attention, all the accolades.

EDITS & UPDATES
I love Plogs that give the pertinent information on the first post. It makes it easy to find the information you're looking for without scrolling through the whole Plog. I'll try to keep this post updated as I go.

Started modifying an Infocus 550LS - Post #15
Cut out frame for 8.9" 1025 by 600 lcd - Post #34
Modified light engine (reflector and precondensor holder) - Post #39

Costs thus far:
Old Infocus 550LS - $45 (includes S&H) from ebay
1025 x 600 8.9" lcd - $95 (includes S&H) from Johnzo on LL's trading forum

you are in good company phutton. nice work and nice effort on the LCD's btw.

cheers. this one's for you !

Therein lay my downfall from DIY.

So my plan of attack was to use the smaller 150 quartz lamp a la Elken, overdrive it a la Arizona, stick it in a old commercial unit a la Jonjandran, and throw a little new stuff in the mix by sticking a DBEF behind the fresnel to recycle the unused light from the first polarizer.

Figured the old infocus 570 gets 300 lumens with a 400 watt halogen lamp. A 400 watt halogen puts out about 12,000 lumens. Hey! that's the same output as a 150 watt MH lamp, aka 150 cdm or quartz. But then put in the DBEF and double that to ....say 500-600 theoretically. Ohhh, looking good! But then let's overdrive the ballast to ...oh...250 to 300 watts. Get somewhere in the range of 800-1000 lumens. Now, I'm getting excited.

The key is to use that Infocus light engine and optics. That's got the specially designed optics. So ebay, here I come.

Wow!! there's a ton of 550 and 570s out there. they're running about $75 - $100 shipped.Not bad for specialized light engine, small(ler) form factor. And very modible setup. Don't look too bad either.

so I start the process of getting one.

But there are other old commercial projectors out there that may be modible.

So I start doing my research. Old commercial projectors, light engines, what's doable and what's not.

One surprise I find is that many old projectors used metal halide lamps and ballasts. Hey! that's interesting. Maybe, if I get the right commercial projector I won't have to buy a new ballast.

so, let's start looking for old commercial projectors that use metal halide lamps instead of UHP lamps and such. Wow! there are quite a few. Not as many as UHP lamps, but enough to give a good choice. WoW! Look at the specs and user reviews for some of them, especially those Sharp Xg-*** series.

Hey, look at this. Some of those are pretty big, about the same size as our projectors. Thay use 3 lcds, but more importantly they use MH ballasts and have a huge lighting compartment to put the light in.

so my head starts mulling around the possibilities....lighting compartment large enough to modify...metal halide ballast and lamp...overdrive 150 watt mh small lamps...or underdrive generic $50 575 HMI lamp...All I need is collimated light at the light engine and it won't know the difference...What the heck, spent $200 or so on the led setup. Gonna spend another $200 or so on the 570 retrofit. Why not get an old commercial projector that fits my speific requirements and try to mod the light egine.

My requirements:

Gotta be big enough to work with
Gotta be native XGA
Gotta use a MH lighting engine
Good reviews
Gotta be cheap. Don't want to spend more than I would've by modding the Infocus 550/570.

So, I did the necessary due diligence. Found a ton of XGA, MH, working used commercial projectors that "looked" big enough (let's say around 20" long or so). Some forums mentioned that lighting compartments to be as big as 5 inches square.

I can work with that.

So, if I simply take an MH bulb. Stick a reflector and condensor on it such that the rays are collimated. the projector should not know the difference. Yeah, I'll get a loss of light by going from parabolic setup to precondensor setup. But if the commercial is projecting 1000 lumens with a 150 MH bulb to begin with, I can take a 25-30% hit and still have a good projector.

So last night I put out a "best offer" of $150 on a $499 "Buy it Now" Sharp XG-E5300U. It had all the specs I wanted and the user reviews on quality and durability were great. It's almost as big as my current DIY projector at 21" long, 14" wide and 8" high. Seller came back with $300 counter offer. I came back with $175. Figured I'ld lose that one but wasn't gonna spend anything more.

Seller accepted.

So now I kinda joined the commercial/DIY club that Jonjandran started. But in this case, instead of keeping the lighting system and changing the imaging system, I plan on keeping the imaging system and changing the lighting system.....But I still have about a 1000 hrs left on the old lighting system. Hey, gotta test it out in its original form...for quality purposes.

Sooo, I kinda inadvertently slipped from true DIY. But it was getten kinda expensive. And I had to justify all the money some way to my better half. Hopin to assuage the wife Gods through sacrificing some of my DIY-ness, and giving her a little bit of commercial goodness.

What I actually plan on doing is taking voltage measurements while the projector is running (yeah, I know, not when it is igniting). From those I can determine if a cdm bulb or generic HMI can work. Hopefully, the volts will be AC and not DC. IF its DC then I'm screwed and back to ebay to sell and get the Infocus 550/570 for the original plan.

If it's AC then I can start planning on making a collimator/reflector lamp that fits in the compartment. As I said, I expect a loss of output, but even a 50% drop from the current 1500 lumens gives me more than enough for my home family room screen of 75" diagonal.

Feels good to get it all out there doesn't it!

I know how you feel, good luck on your new venture!

So, I recieved my Sharp Xg-E3500U XGA 1500 lumen projector today. The reason I targeted this projector was because the reviews were outstanding and the 1500 lumens were HUGE. Here is the link to reviews and specs.

I was kinda excited. Figured I had a pretty good DIy projector and very watchable at 100 lumens. But a good 1500 lumen projector should blow it away. I should be able to use a grey screen and have much better image quality with the lights on. By the way about 90% of our TV watching is with all the lights on.

Now, I'm gonna set up the following pictures with current stats.

The Sharp has 885 hours on the lamp. The lamp is supposed to last 2,000 hours, so there should be another 1100 hours left. Should be plenty of time and the lamp should be plebty bright. My DIy has about 2-3 years of watching on it. It definitely needs cleaned and the lamp replaced. I know that the brightness has decreased somewhat from when I first started. that was why I actually decided to rebuild another projector. It is just a standard LL projector. Probably middle of the road. Many around here have much better builds from what I can tell.

SO HERE ARE SOME DIRECT COMPARISON PICTS. I don't know if these are the first. But I do know that I'm often frustrated that I can never find them on the forum (or anywhere else for that matter). Keep in mind that I just turned on the sharp and plugged in the c.omputer. I looked for brightness controls on it but could not find any. This was probably top of the line about 10 years ago. Again, it is advertised at 1500 lumens AND user reviews are almost unanimous that it is top of the line.

So let me start with the Sharp on the left and my DIY on the right. Unfortunately, I could not get exact images up, yet. Need some type of signal splitter.
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Here is a good one with Danny Phantom.
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Of course, you can see all the lights are on with both of these screen shots. the sharp is projected onto a white painting canvas leaning up against a white stucco wall. the DIY is projected onto a DIY Parkland Plastics screen.

This is a good one. an aroebics channel or something.
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This is with the lights off.

Boy!! I don't know wether to be proud or dissappointed. I spent $175 + $42 S&H on a used commercial projector that is supposed to put out 1500 lumens. I could not take ansi lumen measurements because I could not get a clear white screen (really didn't try that hard), but the measurements I took on the white portions of the screen showed about 98 lux and 70 lux. I can see that it is brighter than my DIY, but not by that much. Maybe it's putting out 150-200 lumens by my visual estimate.

What I can't figure out is how you get 1500 lumens from that. I know that if the lamp was new it would be brighter... but 15 TIMES brighter!? C'mon!! If it drops out that fast then that's just plain misleading advertisement. The lamp is still under 50% its rated lifetime.

I thought it would be a no brainer that I would replace my DIY. But after these shots I just don't know. There has been a lot of advancements since I originally built my DIY, like AG removal, small lamp light engines, and finally good condensor systems. I could probably at least double my DIY output and make it sharper. and get a much better color temp and CRI. My current CRI is about 65-70, very low.

My wife and I will sleep on it awhile. I figure I may just put it up so that I have something to watch while I redo my DIY setup. I thought I'ld be done with DIY once I tasted commercial...but, no. It's sooo close...and I know I can improve upon it with a lot of the LL advancements...I can't stop now.

Gotta make it brighter

Gotta make it smaller

Gotta make it sharper

It's in my blood

heh cool

Dam phutton, just reading this describes everything I'm going thru. A really captivating read especially for people such as ourselves who 'got's the bug in their blood'. I'd say you have a making’s of a good paperback novel here. Truck'on bruddah!!

Osram may have the 250 watt ceramic out. If they will sell them, it might make a good option for a smaller panel pj. This would be a nice long advantage over a commercial projector. Good LUX and a 5,000 to 10,000 lamp for less than $100 bill.

My brother-in-law has a nice DLP 1280x720 and with a old lamp it had nothing on my PJ (no screen door but slightly less sharpness and no better color and the DVD player is not nearly as good at scaling as my cheep SIS onboard video card so he had strange artifacts and some weird ghosting sometimes). When the lamp popped he got his $300 replacement and it looked a lot brighter and had better color balance, He now has a brighter and slightly more colorful picture than my PJ. His 2.8 gain screen may be helping a lot, I still have to bring the LUX meter over to find out the ANSI. ( In a small room don't go for the 2.8 gain highpower unless there is only one sofa in the middle)

A 250 Ceramic and a WUXGA might still be way cheaper and be lower cost to run than a 1080 commercial projector.

I think at this point that the ceramic lamp color (the deep red) is better than ALL the other lamps including the UHP commercial projector lamps so it may be imposable to beat it with any other PJ.

I hear what you're saying and I have to agree. I am somewhat dissapointed in the performance of the commercial pj, but still want to give it a chance. Heck, I gotta take down my DIY anyways to refurbish it.

I put a regular video signal in the commercial pj and it was a lot brighter. But I was surprised the image quality was actually lower. That seems to be a recurring theme among many around here who have switched back and forth. There was a lot of dust on the screens so I currently have the commercial pj on the bench for cleaning. Once I clean it I will put up both systems and take side by side picts of the same images for everyone to see.

You know, I've seen some commercial picts around here where the member said that they could not get the DIY to show next to the commercial, because the dramatically higher brightness of the commercial drowns the DIY out. I'm not having that problem at all. The commercial is brighter, but not by that much. Again, I'm only getting 100 lumens out of my DIY. But my screen is only about 73 inches. This gives and avergae lux of about 70 or so. I think that is the key. The screen size must match the lumen output.

Here's is something else to be said about DIY versus commercial.

1) I actually find myself getting nervous about the lamp life on the commercial - and I don't even have it up yet. I should have 1200 hours left on it. Even when I was just testing it, I saw the counter go up 1 hour and felt that nervous ting you feel when you know an expensive repair is coming up. Maybe I'll get used to it. But I never worried about that with my DIY. Again, the projector is our main family room TV.

2) My 7 years old son was learning basketball. He was dribbling in the family room (which is in the basement) and we were passing the ball back n forth. My DIY is a solid wooden tank and my screen is nothing but some polywall on a frame. I've never worried about breaking anything. When a ball hits the DIY it simply bounces right off. When it hits the screen it simply bounces right off. I realized that some of that play freedom would have to be reduced when the commercial is up. It won't take a direct hit from a football or basketball. I can't even imagine doing ANYTHING around a plasma display.

As I said, I'll give commercial a try. But I am hankerin to do a smaller DIY or maybe even a retrofit (if I can find a compatable "as-is" projector cheap) if it don't work out. Those new ceramic lamps do sound very enticing. And now that I know the picture quality of our DIYs are better than commercials, it provides another point of pride. The reason I'ld consider retrofit is that the optics would simply be better designed, maximizing lumen output.

Well, I got one heck-of-a-deal on an old Infocus 550ls. Purchased it for $10 and paid $35 for shipping.

Put it on the stand, and it works perfect. Too bad. I plan to scrap it down, Put an MH light engine in there, and a 8.9" widescreen 1024X600 lcd from Johnzo.

I stipped it dowm. Looks like It was made to be taken apart. The light engine looks like it can easily be adapted to G12 159W light engines

I got picts, but can't find my camera, I might link to a log of the project.. I'll post picts soon.

This really looks fun compared to the othe projects I have,

OK, so I now have some picts of the infocus. I think it'll be quite fun to convert this and plan to go that direction.

In the mean time, here are some picts.

This first one is the infocus as recieved.
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Side view
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Back view
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Here is with the light engine lid open
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You cannoty see it, but there are two base sockets for the halogen bulbs. You simply move the slide right or left to select the halogen bulb you want.

It was fairly easy to take the cover off. I first took the rubber triplet ring off. then I removed two screws in the back and the cover slipped right off. Like I said, it's almost as thoguh this was made to dissamble easily, unlike some of the other projectors that were a struggle to work with.
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Here is what it looks like with the cover off and the projector turned on.
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The projector is quite bright. It puts out 130 lumens with just a 14,500 lumen bulb. That would translate to about 350 lumens with a 400 watt MH bulb - if the arclength were small enough. Problem is the lcd is basically useless for modern viewing. It won't even accept a signal from my cable composite plug. I think it don't accept anything over its original resolution, which is very low. Just as well. I'm gonna throw away the lcd and circuits anyway.

So I stripped the squirrel cage fan, the speakers, the old lcd, and the circuit boards off of it. Here is what it looks like without that stuff.
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There is some room in the front and back to fit the lcd power supply and some other misc stuff. I don't think I'll be able to fit the MH ballast in there unless it were very small.

Here is the back compartment with the light engine removed.
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That's a fronty surface mirror there. the lcd was slightly tilted upward towards the triplet which is slightly higher than the lcd.

This is with the front surface mirror removed and the space in the back showing. It comes with its own fans. I think I'll keep these fans on and ditch the squirrel cage blower in front.
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So here is a closeup of the light engine removed. I think this will be key to making it work. I'll have to replace the halogens with 150 watt MH lamps. I'm thinking about trying to use two at the same time. The reflector creats a double image, so the lamp fills the triplet a little better.
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Here is the bottom of the light engine. there is a thick condensor and glass heat shield. If you look closely you will see the double image the reflector creats. this image is not ideal. When the halogen is aligned perfectly the double image is exactly touching the original filiment, providing a square 10mm by 10mm arc image.
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And finally, the circuits I'm discarding.
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Thanks DAZZZLA, ya came through again.

They come in grey? Very interesting and a good price. Concur about the original lcd- it's crap. Still looking for a decent 8" lcd

So I've been doing some researching into ballasts and lamps. So far, I'm leaning towards this icecap 150 watt ballast and this Osram 150 watt powerball.

The ice cap ballast measures 6.5"x4"x1.6". I think I can fit it flat in the bottom front of the projector. The powerball should have UV stop and outputs 14,500 initial lumens and 11,600 mean lumens over 12,000 hours. The cri is 95. (I wish there was some way to increase that icecap current output to slightly overdrive the lamp. Would rather have a 4,000 hour, 16,000 lumen output {every 10% increase reduces lamp life by 2/3rds})

this would provide an output of between 130 lumens (initial) to 104 lumens (mean). I may be able to increase that by 10% if I remove the heat shield. It's a nice heat shield- Designed to withstand 400 watts at close distance. But if I go with one 150 watter, it should be good to remove it.

so far the total price looks like this:
Infocus $45
Osram $48
Icecap $130
G12 base $10
8.9" lcd $95

Estimated total price so far is $328. everything but the infocus and lcd is retail . the infocus was ebayed, so that will be the unknown. I think the $45 total price is about the cheapest you'll get it. Mostly you can expect to spend about $100 for it on ebay. I got my lcd (native res 1066X600) from Johnzo (who sells the 10.6"). It may still be available from his supplier but he doesn't sell it directly anymore.

A while ago, just before they stumbled upon the 10.6" Johnzo was selling the 8.9" 1066X600 resolution lcd. I think yoshuaspawn used it to good effect in one of his builds. It probably is still out there but you gotta go through the Chinese seller that provides Jonhzo his panels. Maybe Johnzo can get one for ya. I got one from johnzo a while back for only $95. Great deal.

So, today I cut out my frame for the lcd. Couldn't find a nice piece of wood around so I stole my sons old wooden puzzle board. What the heck, it was the right size and thickness and he's outgrown it anyways.

Here is the pict of the lcd working next to the frame
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It's tough to tell but the board is on the left. I cut grooves into it so the lcd sits snuggly in the frame.

Next job: remove antiglare

Antiglare removed today. No picts cause the cameras low on battery. I soaked with a rag, but in the end I don't think it needed it. Seems the water did not go through this antiglare film. The corner required some prying with a razor, but once up the rest just came up in one smooth pull.

Turns out the circuit board behind the lcd is about 2", while the top and bottom of the frame is only 1.5". this means the circuit board will overhang the frame. I have to measure to determine if it will safely fit in the projector with the cover on. If so, I will extend the frame. If not I will move the lcd lower so the top of the frame is bigger than the bottom. This will add some lens shift to the projector, but at the expense of possibly light uniformity.

After that I will buy two small halogen lamps at the local menards and test out the possibility of running two lamps under the reflector. I want to see if it is feasible, given the double image that the reflector causes. Figure that if the arclengths are close enouf and the reflector puts the double images between both filaments then the light source would essentially be a rectangular arcimage.

After that I will test the DBEF film I have to see if I can increase overall lumens by recycling some of the light.

I measured the angle of the original lcd centerline with the triplet centerline. Turns out the projector has a natural 8 degree keystone to it already. The original lcd was tilted up towards the triplet.

I plan to ceiling mount this projector, so I will have to keystone the projector and possibly add lens shift. Without a lens shift I will require a 16 degree keystone (min), which would require an additional 8 degree tilt to the already 8 degree natural keystone.

If I set the new lcd (16:9 ratio) at the edge of where the old lcd was I will get some additional lens shift. If I use the maximum lens shift available then I would only need an 11 degree keystone, or an additional projector tilt of 3 degrees over the natural keystone of 8 degrees.

If I employ the lens shift then my centerline for the light will be shifted upward from the center of the screen since the light engine is already set in place.

I did it now! I took down my first pj. Now, we're without a projector until I either get this done or refurbish my first one. Here is a picture of the two for size comparison purposes.
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Ran into a small problem with dimensions. The holder that the lamp fits into is only 21mm wide. this means that I will either need to use a lamp that is less than 21mm in diameter or I will have to cut it and widen the gap.

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I can't use the Osram powerballs because they run about 24mm in diameter. Fortunately I can use the Philips cdm lamps because they are 19mm in diameter. I can also use the cheapo lamps from CB Concepts since they are also about 19mm wide.

If I can get a cheap 250 electronic ballast that will fit in front of the projector I will buy one of the cheapo bulbs and see about overdriving it for now. Figure I don't want to mess around with distances until I've ruled out the lamps that are currently available. If these lamps don't work well enouf then I'll consider modifying the holder for larger diameter lamps.

Well, I didn't like the idea of being limited to only 19mm diameter lamps. That really limits me to single ended 150 watt lamps, and even then just a few brands.
So I cut out the slot to allow up to 30mm lamps to be fitted inside. In truth, anything over 25mm may require shimming the precondensor and reflector. But there are a lot of lamps up to 250W that are 25mm in diamter.

Side view of light engine
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Even if I end up using only a 19mm diameter lamp then the extra space allows some play in there.

Here is the top view.
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Don't let the look fool you. the holder is made of metal, so I needed to dremmel it out. Think it turned out good. We'll see when I stick a lamp in it.

Right now I'm really leaning towards the HQI-DE250/DX/FC2 lamp. this puts out 20,000 lumens, has a very good cri and 5000K color temp, so it leaves room for overdriving. Also, Pepe seems to be having some good results overdriving this lamp.

This site sells it cheaper than anywhere else I can find.

The only problem I have with it is the 25mm arclength.

The real question is should I overdrive a 10mm arclength 150 watter to 250 watts (prob give about 20,000 lumens for 3,000 hours or less). Or do I go with the 25mm arclength lamp. I can either overdrive it or run it at 250 watts.

My panel is obly 8.9" diagonal, so I don't know how the arclength shows. the original halogen had a 10mm arclength, so the engine might be optimized for 10mm.

The wife asked me when I'ld have the projector back up.

I said two weeks

Put myself in a pickle now.

So, I figure if I use the 400W pulse start ballast I have on hand with the Osram 250 HQI, like Pepe did, I should be able to get it up by then. I'll build a box for the ballast and have a cable going from ballast box to projector.

That'll be cheapest in the short run, also, since I won't have to shell out another $120 for a ballast. The setup has also been proven (400W pulse start ballast with Osram 250 HQI) to work by Pepe. That gives me a better feeling about it.

"So, I figure if I use the 400W pulse start ballast I have on hand with the Osram 250 HQI, like Pepe did, I should be able to get it up by then. I'll build a box for the ballast and have a cable going from ballast box to projector."



I have not heard back from Pepe lately so we don't know for sure how long the 250 lasted at around 380 watts. I still think it is safer to go a little lower in power. If you just go to a slightly smaller cap with the 400 watt ballast it should work fine.

Like this 20uf. Does you ballast have a 24uf cap?

http://cgi.ebay.com/CSC-Capacitors-325P206...0109345QQihZ007

http://cgi.ebay.com/Cornell-Dubilier-KTSF4...emZ170062780153

Yeah, I'm pretty sure my cap is 24uf. At this point I can get the Osram 250 HQIs for $29 here. with only $8 for shipping.

At this price I figure I can gamble a bit on lifetime. My real concern was relative safety. I'm pretty sure Pepe was using the exact same ballast I have (we both started with Venture PS bulbs and ballasts) so I'm a bit confident that the bulb will work with the ballast.

Yeah, I was kinda wondering what happened to Pepe, also.

I purchased the 575 watt ballast from the trading forum in the hope that it would fit in the infocus. Turns out it is just too big. I plan on using it to refurbish my old projector.

So what do I plan on doing now with this. All transformers I could find for this were just slightly too large to fit into it. I did some research and have come up with a plan.

I found this circuit for converting 12V to a 50 watt MH ballast. I like this circuit because I actually understand it. seems pretty straightforward to me.

If you have been keeping up with my led experiments then you know I already have a 250W 24V switcher that I bought off of ebay for about $40. Here is a pict of it when I was doing the led experiments.
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The 24V switcher is to the right of the led panel.

It fits in the infocus with some room to spare for a transformer. But, the regular transformers are simply too large to fit in the infocus. I did some research and found out that the core size to a transformer gets smaller as the frequency increases. But you need a different type of core for high frequency transformers. The circuit above is great because it operates at high frequency. All I gotta do is find a small high frequency transformer (about 250 watts) to build the circuit.

Did an ebay search and came up with these high frequency core and bobbin sets for about $12 shipped.

Bingo!! Right size. Right power.

So, once I finish refurbishing my old projector I will build my homemade electronic ballast and stick it in the infocus.

120V 60HZ AC power will be converted to 24V Dc power. This will be converted to a high frequency square wave AC power and sent to the MH lamp. I anticipate about a 200 watt or so power supply, taking into account losses.

I know how you feel man..I'm going back and forth in my mind trying to figure out what would be best to do with my projector..I too have the infocus litepro 550 (got it for $50 so you are still the winner ). I'm thinking of simply pulling the lightbox out, retrofitting it with a 150w powerball, and mounting inside a box built for the 12.1" panels. I'm hoping it will give me the brightness I'm looking for (better than my 400w "football" lamp w/ tin foil reflector in my current 15" projector) and eliminate the need for me to exhaust the heat into the attic.

if I can sell my existing 400w light setup and stripped 15" panel, then get the 150w light setup and retrofit it in the infocus light box to work with a 12.1 diy box I would be very happy.

well it's been 5 months since I posted in this thread, but now that the 7.2" panel is ready for projection I was wondering if you might be resuming your infocus project? I want to pull mine out of the closet and gut it as well but the burning question mark is still what will the new light engine be???