That's the way I had it wired until attaching the aluminum angles because the screen wasn't square. They also caused the screen to bow more. I removed them once I attached the aluminum angles as I didn't think they were needed anymore.



Now that I think about it, it might be wise to re-attach them so that the wires go behind the TV stand's metal upright portion. That should work out the slight bow that I have left.

Thanks for the idea!

Shiny! Glad I could help. Let me know how it works out when you get it done.

Well... I tried to hook the wire up again - running it behind the upright support of the stand - and it started bowing the screen frame. Badly. I'm going to have to see about finding some way to connect the wires from each of the four corners to the upright metal support on the back of the stand. I think if I could adjust the four corners separately, it'd work better.

Still no progress on the wiring, unfortunately.

I worked on my lightbox modification this past weekend so that I could add my pre-con to it. I used the standard 120mm fan guards but needed to modify them to fit with my projector/lightbox setup.

In this picture, you can see how I cut the centers out of the fan guards (using my Dremel and a diamond wheel). For my lightbox, I also needed to partially cut the bottom rings as my lightbox would not properly sit on the shelf that was made for it, otherwise. For the sake of symmetry, I decided to cut the top, as well. What isn't shown is that I also needed to bend the loops that the machine screws would pass through to fit the lightbox. You can see that in a later picture.







You can see that the pre-con has room to expand with the heat generated by the lamp.

On the lightbox itself, I needed to first drill the holes (circled in red) for the machine screws that would hold the fan guards and pre-con in place. Also in the picture below, you can see the outline of the circle that I would be cutting so as to get as much light as possible to the pre-con.



Next up was cutting the circle. I was worried that this wouldn't turn out very well, but it wasn't so bad.





I then grounded and cleaned up the edges to get rid of the burrs. After that, it was time to put it together. I decided to ditch the spacers that held the lamp in place that came with the lightbox and used a couple #4-40 x 1" machine screws and nuts so I could get more precise placement of the lamp.





I then attached the fan guards and pre-con using #8-32 x 3/4" machine screws and nuts. Like I said, I don't think it turned out too bad.





Maybe I'll actually get to the wiring sometime this week.

Would you mind elaborating on this a bit? How many of each piece did you use? Do you have any more details about how you put this thing together?


Also, does anyone know where I could find some more information about hooking up the controller board to the lcd panel?

I didn't keep a running count on how many of each piece I bought. I first started building the "cassette" for the 10.6 LCD that I killed, so I didn't finish that one. I had it about 75% done, though. I had to keep running back to Michael's Craft Store to pick up more. I was able to use most of my "mistakes" building the rest of the projector, so there wasn't much waste. I think I spent about $50 - $75 (total) on the Basswood, alone. If you can, I would seriously consider using aluminum.

Here's a picture of my 12.1 MST board:

Let us know if this setup covers the entire width of your panel (lcd). The inside wire ring of the top fan grill may still be in the way and can still be trimmed further back by cutting away the ring and just leaving the 4 stems. It's a matter of flipping the grill over and bending the stems slightly up to snuggly fit the precon. It made a difference when trying to use as much of 4.5" lens to capture most of the arc rays and converge it forward to cover my older 15" panel.

Hi QM, How it is going ? A gentle reminder for posting your screenies !! We are still waiting to see it and enjoy

O snap! Amazing work man! Take your time! The best part about building a projector is building a projector Looking great brosef

I hope that you used good glue It would suck to have it fall apart when you finish it joking of course

Looking forward to your screenies. I also really like the way you used thin wood to cut it with a scalpel, (wish I'd have done that as I hate dremelling & sanding).

I have not worked on the projector in quite a while, though I use it daily.
There has been something that has been bothering me for about a month or so (after I did the mod to my lightbox to accommodate my pre-con). I'm getting this strange "reflection" projected onto the screen and I can't identify where it's coming from. I don't have any light leaks around my LCD/fresnel cassette, so light isn't reflecting off of anything forward of the front fresnel.

You can see the curved line near the bottom of the screen. It seems that the image is brighter where the curve is. These pictures were taken with automatic settings and do not portray the projected image quality. (click on thumbnails for larger image)


You can see here how the line fades when a darker color is shown.


This picture is with the LCD off.


And this picture shows a negative image of the above picture.


And here's the same picture as above with the brightness turned down. Has anybody ever seen anything like this before? Does this mean that the problem is with the LCD?


BTW: I removed the pre-con and still see the curve.

Huh? That is weird. Have you tried the stick and card board thing? Just take a dowel and tape a small circle onto it. Then with the PJ running drop it between the LCD and rear fres. Then when you move it around you can see where the light is that you need to block. It worked for me. Worth a try.

I did the exact same thing to remove unwanted light... Mine came from the ballast(?) it was in the box before, i put it outside and voila!

I tried Windcalmer's paper trick, and, with the paper between the LCD and rear fresnel, was able to tell that the light curve isn't an abnormality of the LCD. There isn't anything wrong with the rear fresnel - no scratches or imperfections. I couldn't trace it back to the light engine, so I can only assume that it has something to do with the larger opening I cut into the lightbox. It has to be - nothing else has changed in the projector.

It seems that the size of the hole that I cut into the lightbox was the problem. Maybe some of the light was bouncing off of the reflector at the wrong angle, or something. I took a piece of aluminum that I cut off a $1 cookie sheet I picked up down at the local Dollar Store and cut a smaller hole in it and slipped it on.

Before:



After:



Results: No more "light curve"



Thanks for the help, again, Windcalmer!

Glad I could help. Very nice fix. Cheap, easy and perfect for the job at hand! Nice one!

Quasi,

Where did you get your black out cloth? I dont think remember reading anywhere about where you got it or the width of the cloth, that doesn't look like its 54" wide.

thanks

I bought the black out cloth at the local Walmart, but if I had to do it over, I'd buy from Fabricland. The stuff at my local Walmart didn't have the vinyl type backing (which is what most people use for the front of the screen). The front and back of the cloth I bought are the same.
You buy the cloth measured by length, so the 54" becomes the height.

Hey Quasi...
Regarding your 12.1 panel, did it come with a silvery mirror-like backside? My panel has this.

I was fortunate enough to get a completely stripped (or bare) 12.1 panel.