This is going to be short: I moved this post from the project gallery...
I've been accruing parts in my room for about a month now and work on my PJ is underway.
Sorry there won't be any pics until it's finished due to lack of a digital camera.

THE PARTS:
15" samsung kit from techbench
coil core ballast from lighting unlimited
eye hor bulb
lumenlab lens kit
norpro
nuts&bolts and wires and screws and junk
1/2 oak plywood
PVC pipe fittings for focus mechanism

WORK SO FAR:
All I've done so far is just frame my lenses and lcd. I've also tried to fix my projector lens into a 3" male PVC adaptor with the female part being mounted in the front panel this way by screwing in the male+lens, I get a nice focusing mechanism with about 2" of travel. I have a question about this, I've noticed that it doesn't/can't screw in all the way leaving me with only 1" of traveljava script:emoticon(':angry:') I don't know why this happens and was wondering if anyone has encountered this problem or knows why it exists. The male+female PVC pipes just don't screw all the way in together and leave about 1" of exposed threads. I was going to consider boiling the part and stretching it with a clamp or shaving threads to fix it but I'd rather not mess with it if there's a better solution. Any ideas? ***edit: the solution to this is to cut the female adapter to about 1/2 or less this gives you about 3 thread turns to work with. The problem is that the PVC adapters are very slightly conical in shape***

IDEAS I PLAN TO INCORPORATE:
Surfing around on the forums for a while provides a wealth of ideas for stylizing you own projector. I was thinking about dropping all the electronics through the bottom of the box and having them all mounted pretty much directly underneath the light section of the box. Then I was going to angle the sides and top of the box in and down to the projection lens to give the box a more.... shapely look. The idea that Toblerone used in his projector box with using a smaller piece of tempered glass and putting it closer to the bulb I also intend to try. I was going to try to put in some sort of turnbuckle front leg on my box just below the projector lens to give it a tilt up/down mechanism which also compliments the fact that there will be an extra height in the back of the box due to the electronics compartment. I was currently planning on leaving both fresnel lensed unattatched to glass and hope that the closer smaller glass has enough power to stop unwanted heat.

Sorry I don't have a dig or even regular camara so I'm stuck with ms paint, if you're interested in any of this stuff I'll make a drawing for you.
I finished essentially, I have a bit of tinkering to do to even out the light distribution (it fades slightly at the right hand side of the screen) The image is crisp and bright though. I've only ever run it for 1hr and have still some heat tests to do on it but every thing seems to work fine.
I did have some heat problems manifested in bending the first fresnel collecter lens due to thermal expansion against the frame it was in (it went flat again after it cooled) so I made all air path holes larger and problem solved. The "naked" fresnel I don't think will be a problem after everthing is put together however during construction I did manage to put a few minor scratches on both lenses just moving them around in and out of the box for minor adjustments.
The fan is a bit noisy but it's a variable speed deal so as soon as I can get a thermometer in there I can figure out how low I can turn it so the LCD doesn't over heat. Also I don't have speakers yet so it's all I hear when it's on.
The PVC mounted lens looks and works great over a limited span. I was surprised at how much you have to move the lens to get focus over a range of throw distances and unless you don't plan on moving the pj around much this is not the solution you need I'd go with focus box or rails next time (or something else that gives more focus span) the PVC give about 1.5" of movement.
The light partition (using the tempered glass close to the light to seal off the direct heat transfer through the air seems to work alright. And also seems to provide a decent place to put some electronics in between the partition and the fresnel if it's not directly in the light path (which I did not do)
The dropping the electronics through the bottom worked very well and serves to keep everything nice and cool however it does add about 2 inches to the height of the pj and it's already pretty tall (2" due to the lcd power brick being in there).
I angled the box to go from the field lens size down to the triplet size and while it does look neat and cuts down on size and building material somewhat, it was a pain to do (my carpentry skills were not great starting out. They've probably improved 100 fold doing this project) another drawback to this was that I didn't properly account for the fact that if the angling starts right next to the field lens, there isn't enough space to allow for keystone tilting. Rats!
That's about it, I think I'm done posting on this line unless anyone has a question about this projector project.

I have the same prob. it looks like one or the other may taper to one end...I'm going to HD on sunday and will pick up a couple more to do some testing, cutting and so on. I'll give you a up date if you want...

lesko

Yes actually they both taper so you can't really get away from it using them as they are. Since I was using 1/2" plywood, I decided finally to cut the female part down to 1/2" as well and that seems to work pretty well while giving enough support to hold the lens+male part. It still doesn't screw in all the way but it only sticks about 1/4" short.

Okay I'm pissed. I ran a test today for about 3 hours with a temp probe on the LCD *it never went above 97 but then something sounded like it caught on fire and smoke started pouring out the back (the light went a bit dimmer as well) After letting everything cool down I started taking it apart and after 2 1/2 hours, the ballast was still hot!!! something in there is wrong. I'm thinking perhaps it was too close to the lamp or the cooling circuit for the ballast wasn't doing it's job so some of the copper wires melted their coating and shorted with each other. Now whenever I turn it on, nasty nasty nasty nasty smelling smoke comes out of the ballast. It still turns the bulb on but obviously I can't let it run. I'm wondering if it overheated itself or if the light was too close to it. Has anybody encountered that problem before? with a ballast protected by flashing but not specifically cooled? It was rediculously hot. Also I'm sold on fuses now. I didn't put one in because I couldn't find a fuse socket at any hardware/computer/electronics store in my city. I'll just have to order online or something because now my ballast is unusable. I'm thinking about taking it outside and seeing if it will burn itself out and be fine again? If not, I'm going with the electronic ballast for a replacement.

The coil has melted down, it's dead. First time I've ever heard of that. The ballast should carry a warranty, check it out.

From how hot that thing was getting I felt like I was messing around with fission. Thanks for confirming Brain, we have core meltdown. I'll check on that warranty

yea the smell is the insulation paper used to protect the windings from the core. it sounds like the ballast shorted out to ground(the core).