SUMMARY:

LCD: Sharp LQ154M1LW02, 15.4", 1200x1920, 16:10: eBay
Controller: Pixelworks: Manhattan LCD
Lens: Beseler 14": eBay 450mm with built in ball-screw focus mechanism (this lens is a beast. It is so big.)
Fresnels: 220/550
Lamp: 400W 65K MH, Galaxy Ballast, with cold-mirror reflector.

I no longer think the controller board is the most expensive part of my projector. I think it's the S&H. Canada is awesome until you have to buy things.

STILL TO GO:

Case - Gonna make a case out of red oak or cherry the closest thing the local hardware store had to real furniture plywood and then varnish it real dark. Add some brass appliques, make it all antique looking. Ye old projectore. Pretty much decided on a Haas-style box for now. Unless I decide to lens-shift. Which I have decided not to. Also, the bottom of my case will be flat. I guess that makes it a half hass half dog-coffin. decided to make a dog coffin and rebuild the case some day when I have real tools. Right now I don't.
Keystone Mechanism: Go nuts for a lens shift or just settle for a rotated fresnel approach? Rotating Fresnels it is.

1st update... jimmy-rigged up the controller with a projector and my xbox, just to make sure all my pixels pixelled and suchlike. After navigating through the original german menu, I now move easily through the english settings. Still haven't tried the remote, no AAA batteries lying around.

What style of an enclosure you palnning?, always good to see new faces, Welcome

I was thinking one of these "Hass-style" projectors with the central pivot. I'm gonna try to rig up a thumbscrew to adjust keystone and focus so I can use it in more than one room, and I'm thinking about making a rolling stand so I can have it sit about 3' above the back of the couch, projecting over my head approx at the centre of the screen. Asides from that, it's all still very much in the design process.

The way I usually work, it'll be in the "design process" until about a week after I decide it's finished!

LOL, Thats how i normally work too. However you may want to plan out your optics into the most inane detail, trust me they are specific down to the MM for optimum quality. But either way at the heart of DIY is fun. So have fun and dont hesitate to ask any question of PM me if you need help

Thanks, TheTrustedOne.

I have my digital vernier, focus calculator, and old physics textbook for my inane detail planning optics.

What would you recommend for sourcing optics? I'm in Montreal, and like to avoid shipping up from the states as much as possible on account of the shipping expense.

Trust me i feel your pain, I eventually just said I don't want to scavenge as I did not have the detailed knowledge of optics to know I was getting something that would work and I ordered the standard kit from LL.

I have added the quick sketch for a vertical sled lens shift design, critique at will.

Erm... how do you plan on fitting something like that into a haas box? also with keystone correcting, you really dont need lens shift.

Haha Davegus, I wouldn't do vertical haas, that'd be madness.

I'm back with the straight-shooter idea though. Like the Haas, and might ditch lens shift all together, just do standard keystone correction, with thumbscrews or something.

Update: Finally, the rest of my parts.

I gotta say, all these pictures don't really convey the size of these things. They're huge. The bottom corner is a foot long ruler, to show the size.


I think I'm going to have to go horizontal bulb mount, if the spec sheet says I can (I have to hunt that spec sheet down now) (checked, and it's universal burn position. woo hoo)



Here is a solidworks drawing of my LCD/Fresnel arrangement. There are three nested frames for the front fresnel, connected by dowels, which will allow pivot on both horizontal and vertical axes.



It's not really clear from the photo, but I will be reusing the metal frame from when I originally stripped the LCD, and mounting that to the wood frame.

Also, here is an image showing how I plan on laying out my components (I had the decency to render it this time). The ballast will put a lot of weight up front, but I'll just have to design a mounting system that can cope. All that's left now is to design a cabinet for the sucker, and I will probably start building tomorrow.

Here is the completed front fresnel frame with two axis keystone correction.

And the plane-jane rear fresnel frame.

All of these are made from pine.

Two Axis Keystone Correction . God, how I envy your build now.

Very very cool!

Haha thanks. I figured setting up an entire media room around the optical centre of my projector would be ridiculous, so this was the easiest thing I could think of. Also, I forgot to add: the weird stuff in the centre panel was shrink wrap to protect the fresnel. These things are dust magnets. They seem very static-y. I'll give them a day to diffuse and then blow them both off with a can of air.

Here is the just-completed LCD frame. I took the screen out and gave it a test fit and then put it back in its safe little hole. I have to figure out how I'm going to permanently mount that thing.



Time for a bottle of meditative reflection. Next is the lamp holder.

Had to take some time out today.

Was cutting out a circle for my lens apparatus (man I suck at circles) with the jigsaw today. Smelt something funny.



Went for a nice long walk because my whole house stank of electrical fire.

Whoa, be glad you didn't short all of your wires in the house lol. I hope this doesn't prolong the projector build much. ...oh and about your dual axis correction fresnel frames, how are they going to be mounted in your case (From what we can't see in your mock-up).

Any thoughts yet?

You know, thats just awesome. This will be assimilated, hope you dont mind its just too cool not to

Honestly, I don't know. I think I'm going to make basically book-ends for both fresnel frames and the LCD frame, I'm hoping to align everything perfectly on the base of the chassis, nail it all down, and then just build the box around it.

And insertname, I wouldn't have posted pictures if I didn't want people assimilating and improving on it.

Anyways, it's the working part of the week, so expect little progress.

A bit of knife chopping yielded me two terminals which would fit for the ballast.




And here it is all wired up, ready to burn in. Note the smoke alarm.



And there it goes! It got a lot brighter very quickly. Also I can't hear a thing from this ballast.

Update: 6H burn in, I gotta say, maybe it's the ballast, but I didn't see any of the initial green-ness everyone talks about. (the apparent green above is just from the digital camera. In real life it started orange, went blue-white) The light seemed really bright white after the initial warm up. The maybe blue could be from being in a blue room, and my house is lit entirely with incandescents, so it could have stood out. But I am thoroughly impressed with this Galaxy ballast. I plug it in, the light goes on. There is one click, and a few flashes, and then we have ignition, it seemed to be about 3-5 min to max brightness. Quiet too. I had to put my ear near the lamp to hear a buzz (and that burnt my ear) and there was no noise from the ballast. The ballast did eventually get warm, but I suspect this had more to do with being next to the lamp for six hours.

My 150W ceramic metal halide bulb starts off blue and turns orange when turned off (during cool-down).

I've been wondering about these ceramics everyone speaks of. I think I might try one out if I do a re-build or a new build.

If you ever want to settle in for some lengthy reading about these CMH lamps, check out this 2,109 post-count thread: Ceramic Lamps 150 Watt Type (stands In Its Own Category)

Haha. You know I won't have time for that until the PJ is completed.

Got a test rig set up last night, just to prove to myself that it worked.

It worked.

Will post pics later.

So this is my skeletal "test rig" to get a feel for how big this thing will be. It will be huge.



A test projection. Was able to get much better results.

And then, to tempt fate, I decided to do an anti-reflective strip.

I was lucky, and had one of the ones where it just pulls up. For those of you thinking about it, it comes up in two layers. First one leaves you with something looking like this:



And I freaked out thinking "how am I going to clean this without scrapping the polarizer?

But then I found a second layer.



And now it looks like this.



I MIGHT attempt an antiglare strip, but I think I'll leave it for now, it would be too much of a hit to my wallet if I bust it.

I know this is going to be sweet when it's all together. Great mock up! Some words of thought from Jonjandran: He said that the AG doesn't really make much of a difference as far as "output" is concerned, but you can buff the AG layer with some Mother's Mag Polish. Basically you buff out the AG until it is reflective , like a bad paint job.

Hey Kungpow.

I've got (most of) a chassis now and it's huge and ugly but the picture is ace. Very little vignetting, and plenty bright without the reflector installed yet. I'm just going down to the hardware store to get a lid and some hinges, and I think I'm going to have to put some table legs on this (coming out the back) and put it vertical with a mirror on top. Overhead Projector style. The footprint is just too big as is.

I'll post when I have something new and interesting.

Looks good so far. I see that you want to go vertical with the mirror after I thought about it and just about did it. I cant wait to see what you come up with. How are you planning on doing the OHP style with such a big lens. You have a mirror of some sorts to get it all rigged up.

auto_rock could you please give me the distance from your lens to the front fresnal. Thanks

HunnyDew: About 420 mm. It's not quite right though, I'll gladly post proper specs once I have a good image. You should edit out all those images in your reply though. It just adds un-necessary length to the thread. You weren't really quoting me or replying.

sdubb: I will try the aircraft paint stripper on the back of a rs mirror method, to make a fs mirror. I will have it rotating, attached to a couple of legs sitting on the top (formerly front) of the projector.

Do you want one of those big mirrors from a projector?? I have like 3 of them. Only problem maybe is that they are trapezoid in shape.

How long is the box??

The box is 40" long, 15"tall, 14" wide. And I would love one of those big mirrors. Where are you located?

Ah, Arizona. I see. Postage maybe more than a cheap wal-mart mirror and some aircraft stripper. How shippable are these mirrors?