Here goes nuthin.......


LL Ballast, old style
LL bulb 400W 65K T15
Pro reflector
220/317 freznels/S15 triplet
BenQ FP591
all the other usual little doo dads


LCD is stripped, laying out the wood for cutting now.

Lookin at my throw, I will have anywhere from 6 to 8 ft. of throw. Screen diagonal shows 6ft will be 75 inch diagonal and 7.5 will be 98".
With the LCD I have, what size screen would you guys suggest to purchase. Gonna go with the cheapie da-lite. PJ will be run off of a HTPC and a couple of game consoles. (movie watching, internet browsing and gaming will be its intended use) I have done a lot of research, and just cant come up with my own conclusion to which size screen would be best for me. PJ will be in basement, so I have about 8ft of height.

Hoping to have basic structure completed by end of next week...... busy week here for me, so we will see. Will skip the obligatory pic of a pile of parts, and try to give ya guys some meat and taters when I have some actual work done with it.

K and N air filter!!!!!!!!!!

Well Done!

Thanks!!, but is it ever really "done"?!?!?!?!

Ive been trying to snap a few pics of the result, but I am not a photographer and cant seem to get a good result of the clarity of this thing. I will never buy a tv again!!!!!!!!

Thanks LL

Small tidbits to do yet.

1.Finish triplet focus mech.
2.Re do my vga cable again. Thats the cable you see outside the pj is a temp one , because for some reason the soldering of the vga cable end, doesnt wanna play nice after 4 attempts, im just gonna buy one.
3.fan guards
4.re do my top cover, so its a better curve to follow the case and instead of just holes for air intake, im gonna try louvers to possibly help with light leakage.
5.need to break down and buy a screen, the one I have now is only 6 wide by 5 tall. I need 8x6.

I do have one little gripe with my setup though. Currently I am about 7.5ft from screen. As you can see in pics, its tilted pretty good. Still have a little overlap on the ceiling. I have tried dropping the pj down a few inches. Cant go too much further down with it, as it may be distracting. When I am playing COD4, top of pic has a curve to it, assuming from not enough keystoning????? When I first fired it up, I had it sitting on a table and didnt have this problem. It was almost level. My second cure for this problem may be to move the pj back. If you notice in the pics, right behind it, there is drop ceiling that covers a heating duct, so I would have to move it about 3 ft back which would give me a huge pic. Dont want to go bigger than I am now. May have to step up to the pro lense to keep the same size? I hope I built in enough adjustment for this. What do you guys think?

Looks very nice

To go to the Pro lens your triplet will need to be about 10" farther from the Lcd.
I don't think you have that much room without making an extended focus box.

Gee thanks, you just made the OCD kick in again. Gonna have to build another............

but for now, I guess this one will do!!! Run it off a 360. COD4 is the only game I have. Kids watch DVD's on the 360. The other day I hooked the DVR to it, pretty sweet. Have the 360 and DVR running through a v digi. Component to the pj, then its vga inside the pj. Awesome is all I can say, and I havent done a lot of tweaking yet. Gonna go and look for a pro lense now.............

If it aint one thing, its another. ballast and bulb problems. its the old black one. I have maybe 20-30 hours on it, same from previous owner. bulb fires, and stays lit for about 20 min, then nada............. tried breaker thinking heat issues, but no joy. Guess I need bulb and/or ballast????????

Well, its official,bad ballast. One of the caps was "slightly" gone. One of two things happened, I beleive. Old age or heat. Yes its mounted outside, but now that I think of it, a few times i noticed, it was extremely hot to the touch. 5 seconds, and it would burn your finger. Notice the top and bottom panels of the pj. aluminum. The bottom piece would be just as hot as the ballast. The top piece, is cool to the touch. Possible that the ballast was acting as a heat sink for the bottom cover or vice versa? I never installed the aluminum pieces I had made that act as heat shields, everyone uses. Didnt think I would need them, due to already having aluminum panels. Assumed that people used them because they had wood panels,but maybe I do. Gonna order new ballast AND bulb, install heat shields, and maybe remote mount ballast away from pj. There was a post about how far you can have wires run for ballast, but I cant find it.........

Also will try to repair said ballast with some new caps...........for the next pj!!!!

So I guess "technically" I cant move it to the completed section?!?!?!?!

That is a beautiful case. Just beautiful!

Thanks!! Of course the builder always sees the "little" imperfections. I am by no means a woodworker with tons of tools. Will be doing another, much smaller footprint and all out of aluminum.

This enclosure looks fantastic - but I can't wait to see your aluminum enclosure.

Hi, I like your build but I noticed one minor thing that I thought I should point out.

The covers (guards) on the fans, shown in your first photo, are mounted on the inside. Guarding is meant to prevent accidental contact with the spinning blades of the fans, and hence should be mounted on the outside of the case or between the fan body and the casing.

I was wondering when someone was going to pint that out. Since those photos, I have added fan guards to the outside. Tho ones pictured that are on the inside, I sprayed them flat black to see if it would possibly cut out some of the light leakage...........It was mentioned in an earlier post that fan guards were on the to do list.

Dont know if it made a big difference, but I think I noticed an overall decrease in leakage when I painted the ally panels black on the inside.

Glad to hear that. I was just a little concerned.