Okay so I'm only in the beginning stages of design and parts acquisition for this thing but I've already started to rack up the questions so here goes.
So being the way that I am, I couldn't go easy for my first ever venture in to this type of DIY project.
Head first all the way I say!
In that spririt I've decided to go with a 15.4" WUXGA, Pro Triplet style setup.
I also plan on using the 3Dlabs fresnels: 220mm back, 330mm front.

So, first question:
Here's a pic of my Focal Calc.
Do these numbers look right?
Does that LCD distance seem awfully long?


This gives me an extra long front end, like this:


It's kind of a Haas style modified design to be able to get that much length.
What do ya think?

Thanks
Hoobie

The only problem that I foresee is that your front fresnel (330mm FL) won't match up to your 500mm FL pro lens. Generally you should get a fresnel lens that matches your triplet. You can get this to work by placing your light source closer to the rear (220mm) fresnel. You may run into more heat issues this way. The easiest for starting is to get the matching front lens.

There is one other consideration for you. When I built my first projection I did a 14.1" XGA with a 220 rear and 330 front. But after awhile I added a precondenser, which brightened things alot, but I had to buy another 330mm fresnel for the rear. I have the same problem now with my 15.4" WUXGA, in that I have a 220 rear and 650 front... but I cannot use a precondenser in my current setup without buying a new 330 rear lens.

Hope any of this helps

Ya, brighter is gooder! I was planning on prolly putting in a pro reflector and pre-condenser.
The bulb is prolly gonna have to move forward in my plan to be able to fit the reflector.

How close can I get the bulb to the back fresnel?
Pre-condensers have a FL of their own don't they?
What's the FL on a pre-condenser?
And where can I get a pre-condenser?


Anywho, currently stripping my WUXGA.
Got the two back layers off without too much trouble.
Now I gotta do the front!

Thanks
Hoobie

You'll want the Pro front fresnel (650mm) as your front fresnel should have a focal length greater than the focal length of your triplet ( http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?s...st&p=205574 ).

The distance of your lamp arc (center) to the rear fresnel should be about the same as the rear fresnel's focal length (220mm). You'll want to allow for an inch of movement, forward and back, for tweaking. A pre-con may even decrease this distance. There's a Pre-condenser Calculator for determining optimum placement of the pre-con, as well as a Radius Of Spherical Reflector Calc for determining optimum placement of the reflector.
I think most people buy their pre-cons at surplusshed.com. You can get the FL and other information there.

Hoobie7.com

Ok in my current design I only have a bulb arc to back fresnel of 186mm.
Is this gonna work if I have a 220mm fresnel there?
Actually scratch that!
If I'm running a pre condenser, which I plan to, can I run a 330mm back fresnel?
I tried out the pre con calc, but couldn't really make heads or tails of it.
I filled out the LCD, Triplet, and Fresnels sections. The rest I dont' know about!


Can anybody help with this? What kind of pre con do I need?

Kinda hard to make out but this is the light gate I designed in to the back.
Whatta ya think? Will it work?


Gimme any input you have, negative or positive, I'll take all the advice I can!

Thanks
Hoobie

Hoobie7.com

*** NOTE ***
I have started to worklog this on my website: Hoobie7.com. (Check it out I have a few other interesting mods over there!)
I plan to run concurrent worklogs there and here, and maybe Hardforum too.
So if some of this seems repeated, over explained, and over simplified that's why.
Please be patient, I am making progress!
Thanks,
Hoobie
*** NOTE ***



Having recently purchased my first house I am now overwhelmed with ideas and new projects that I could undertake. At the top of the list is a home theater to rival anything any of my buddies have! At the center of any home theater worth it's salt is an excellent visual experience. To that end, I have decided the only option for the greatest optical spectacle must be a projector. Of course, no regular old PJ will do, mine will be full 1080p high definition. As most commercial projectors capable of 1080p usually range in price from $2,000 to some where just beyond ludicrous. Therefore, I shall attempt to build my own hi-def PJ that hopefully will give those high priced beamers a run for their money. And so it begins.


-12 June 2008-

It just so happened to be that I had an LCD panel just laying around from a dead laptop that I tore apart. This thing had been laying around for nearly a year with no purpose since it's so hard to find lcd controllers. Well, I finally found it a new purpose in life: guinea pig. Here's the test subject now.

All dressed up, and no place to go.


Undressed and ready to tear apart.


Notice the high gloss reflection? Ya, I'll come back to that and why this could have saved me some trouble later on.


Here it is with the backlight removed. Don't worry the tear down of my WUXGA LCD will have even more detailed, boring, step-by-step pictures!


This is my attempt to get a shot of the different layers at the corner, ya not much to see but it kind of gives you an idea of how thin these layers are.


Next was to cut up some paper towel to fit the LCD. You want to cut these several millimeters short of the AG edge so that they end up within a millimeter or two of the AG edge once they have soaked. They are cut a little extra short because the paper towel will expand when wet and you really don't want it going over the edge.


Now here's where some of that precision craftsmanship comes into play. See, you want to get the paper towel right up to the edge of the anti glare coating, but not over it. See, you want to get the AG covered right up to the edge without going over, because the next step is to soak the paper towel in distilled water and lay them out over the panel. Water and electronics, yeah!!



-13 June 2008-

After a good 12 hour soak the AG coating lifted right off along with the paper towel. The plastic bag was placed over the paper towels to help cut down on evaporation. In retrospect I think this was a bad idea as it put weight on the water and, along with the wicking effect of the draped plastic, drew the water out and over the edge of the LCD and ended up causing me problems down the road.


Here's the layer lifting off with ease, but notice how the plastic layer looks shiny and smooth? Ya, come to find out after it was all said and done that wasn't the AG layer. In fact, this panel didn't even have an AG layer, instead it had a super smooth, high gloss layer. Something that didn't need to be removed at all. Oops! Oh well, live and learn.


Ok, so the next thing I learned was a bit more important of a lesson to learn, "What happens when the water spills over the edge and goes where it shouldn't?" Bad things start to happen. The main cause of this, I believe, was from that plastic bag causing the water to wick over the edge. I will not being using that technique for my WUXGA panel.


This tinted layer is what is underneath the AG layer and is known as the polarizer. This is what gives you a picture on the screen. Since it is tinted it would be nice if we could remove it, as it would give us great deal more light but from what I've been told that's about all you would get, a bright light but no picture. Not that I know from first hand experience, this is just what I've been told and I have no intention of finding out if it's true. So it's not a good thing that this started to come up but it's not too bad. You would probably have a slightly dimmer corner here, but in the end it doesn't really matter since this was practice anyway! Alright, that's all I got for now so get outta here!

In the next fun and action-packed episode I'll go into what my design plans are looking like, and then into the tear down of my WUXGA panel. Sounds like fun, huh, kids? You bet it does!

Well, can't exactly have my PLOG falling to the second page now can I!? Time to get on it!
<Shameless Plug> Check out this and my other mods on my website at Hoobie7.com! </Shameless Plug>

DIY Projector Build

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- 26 July 2008 -

Ok, so I know I promised design ideas and I plan to give you just that, but first a little work I got started over the weekend. . . .

At the forefront of my mental list of issues needing attention was what I was going to use for a focusing mechanism. After spending several hours at Home Depot and Lowes I was able to come up with a plan that might just work. Basically I just took my Pro Triplet lens to Home Depot with me and found a piece that fit as closely around the lens as possible. The piece I ended up getting had a slightly larger diameter than the flange on the pro triplet which will work out perfectly. While I had the Home Depot guy trying to help me find something I asked if they get a lot of wierd ass requests for weird ass projects. Apparently they call the PVC aisle at Home Depot the "Macgyver Aisle". : ) Seems pretty accurate to me! Well, I couldn't quite find what I wanted at Home Depot so I went over to Lowe's and was able to find something that I think will workout well. Here's the part numbers of what I got in case any one else thinks this is a good idea.

4"x4" PVC SOILPIP -- 23323

4" DWV x S&D ADAP -- 171362

Knobs Clamping #1 -- 139655

T-Nuts, Three Hole #10-32x -- 137336

.085 8x10 Clear -- 72055

That last item is the UV coated Lexan. And above that is the knob and blind nut or T-nut, whatever you want to call it, that I will use for focus adjust. Ok, on with the Macgyvering! First up is what will become the inner ring that holds the triplet. I will actually be using the larger half o fthis adaptor. The Pro triplet is huge!

Cost of PVC and hardware: $25 - Lowe's



Let me just say here and now, cutting PVC sucks! When cutting perpendicular to the surface it's not bad, in fact, it's like butta. However, cut parralel to the surface sucks. Here's a few reasons why: First, your cutting area is ten times bigger, this slows down the cutting. Second, with this much surface area friction is increased, this increases heat meaning you have to stop periodically to let the piece cool. Third, increased heat means the PVC likes to get sticky, it doesn't exactly melt, just gets "tractioney" and likes to grab a hold of the blade. Fourth, cutting round pieces are extra sucky because once heated up and getting all "tractioney" they tend to just weeble and wobble back and forth with the blade. I ended up using some Windex to try and lubricate the blade to help keep it from binding. But, once it was all said and done this is waht I ended up with.



Not exactly a clean cut, I know. So, out with my brand new file set and a little cleaning up of the edge was done.



Once I had finished with the rough clean up I took it out to the garage for a finer sanding....on the floor. Hey when you need a large flat surface a table is good and a poured concrete floor ain't a bad second best.



Once I got that half way decent it was time to turn my attention to the other piece, the outside tube that the triplet would ride inside. Again, with more cutting parralel to the face, yay!



After finishing the cut it still took considerable amounts of filing to get the slot wide enough for the knob.



Once I had the filing done the knob was able to move the full distance without binding up.



Originally I planned on cutting out a section on the piece that wraps around the triplet but that would have left the flange on the triplet sticking out, so instead I decided to shim the excess keeping the triplet centered , like this.



I picked up a length of peel and stick Velcro today and that's what I'm planning on using to shim out the gap. Finally, I started the slow and tedious chore of removing material from the inside if the larger piece so that the triplet and it's new PVC sleeve will slide right in. Another slow and tedious process, but it's made a liitle easier with a bench drill press and a new drum sander kit. I found that if I just kept the piece flat against the table and pressed the side against the drum sander the drill press would sand and turn the piece with little effort from me, bonus! This is at about a third of the way done.



Ok, so that's it for now. I know, not much of an update but I am hoping to pick up the pace on this in the coming weeks. My plan was to have it up and throwing a picture by the end of July. July is gone now, I don't know where it went........ : (


Thanks,
Hoobie

Hoobie7.com

DIY Projector Build

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- 3 August 2008 -

Okay, so finally let me give you some idea of what this thing will look like when I have completed it, if that day ever comes.

The first shot is kind of just an overall shot of what it will look like once fully assembled and ready to go. It's based off of a Haas design, but with some re-engineering in the front end. Namely, it has been extended to allow for the longer focal length needed for the pro triplet lens that I plan on using. But, to keep it as small and tight as possible the front half will taper inward on the top and bottom like so.


To give you a little better idea of it's shape here is a shot of just the side panel head on.


At the back of the assembly I plan on using a trio of Vantech Stealth 120mm fans. These should do quite well at keeping things cool. As you may or may not have noticed in the first picture towards the back of the side panel there is a little box mounted in the projectors side panel. This is a digital fan controller meant for a floppy bay in a PC, it will be controlling my fans as it sees fit according to it's temperature readings. Covering the fans is a sort of light muffler that will hopefully stop most of the light from trying to pour out the back.


Finally, a shot of the internals, most of which, you'll notice are just kind of floating in mid air. The retention systems for some of the parts have not yet been completed. And they may not get rendered if I decide to just wing it instead. You may also notice that the front has some up and down adjustability for lens shifting. Originally I thought about motorizing this but since have dropped that idea in favor of a manual setup since it will probably get adjusted once and never moved again.


Alright that's it for tonight but I should have more for you shortly as I have started the woodworking phase of this project already. So, until next time, see ya!

Thanks,
Hoobie7

Hoobie7.com

DIY Projector Build

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-5 August 2008-

Here's just a quick update to keep the hungry masses at bay. The woodworking phase has begun! MDF hath been smited! As I'm sure you all know this will complete Preparations A-G and I shall soon dive head first in to Preparation H. (I wonder if I'll get Preparation H ads in my Google Ads now!?)

Anywho, I finally got started on the woodworking with the cutting of my two biggest pieces, the side panels. Wouldn't you know it, I was so excited to be fully immersed into Preparation H that I forgot to snap a pic of the first piece before I cut it all up. It wasn't too big of a deal though. The only issues I ran into were having to convert some of my larger metric numbers into fractional inches because I didn't have a metric ruler that went over 30cm. Plus, getting those two curves on top and bottom took some extra thinking on my part. Which, I'm not gonna lie, it hurt a little, doin' all that thinkin' stuff. But I was strong, strived on, got all my lines down, got it cut, and ended up with something like this:


From here on out it was smooth...er sailing, still not easy, just not so much thinkin'. I got to trace! I'm such a good tracer! You can kinda see on the top piece where my arcs helped to give the PJ some curves and hopefully a little aesthetic appeal.


So, once you get yourself all traced up, you take the top one off and rinse and repeat with the jigsaw. I was using what I believe is an 18 TPI (Tooth per Inch) blade. This I think was a bit too high. I would have preferred a lower TPI blade, something a bit more aggressive. Maybe a 14 or 12 tooth blade, 18 just kinda made the cutting a bit slow, and me a bit impatient. But, of course, it was the only blade I had and you know what they say, "Beggars can't be choosers, m'lord."


They prolly look pretty even in that picture but they were a good bit off. So, next was to clamp the two together and go to town on 'em both at the same time with the "super old school - carrot juice orange colored - random orbital sander" and the one and only piece of sand paper attached to it that I have. Luckily that piece was a pretty aggressive grit which was good since I had a good bit of material to remove from the edges to get them in alignment.


After it was all said and done I now have two side panels that are pretty close to identical, a new notch in my man belt for 1337 woodworking skillz, and a mild case of black lung from the saw dust. Ok, so that's it, that's all I got for this episode. It's a little short I know, but don't worry I have more pics waiting to be worklogged! More to come!

All that work with so few tools! Man, I'm inspired to do the same.
Good job!

Victor

Hoobie7.com

DIY Projector Build

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-8 August 2008-

Progress on the PJ slowly marches on. After cutting out my two largest pieces and getting them pretty close to even I was fairly happy with that and moved on to the front and back pieces. For this session of creating massive amounts of sawdust I moved into the basement since it was hot as balls outside. First, the back panel; sketched out and ready to cut.



Cut out and ready for sanding!



Next up was the slightly smaller front panel. Done!



Third and final piece was the small sled piece that the triplet optics will sit in and allow them to slide up and down for lens shifting. Easy!



Now then, I have all three pieces cut but they need some sanding to even and smooth up the edges, but I don't have a proper workbench to clamp the pieces to for sanding. What's a guy to do? Well I decided to just hold the piece in my lap and sand away at it like that. It actually worked pretty well. Unfortunately the sawdust it created kind of coated me.



It's all good though because I ended up with three very good looking pieces of wood that should work well in my build.



That was it for the night, time to go clean up. More to come soon as I seem to actually be making progress faster than I can worklog it.

Hoobie7.com

DIY Projector Build

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-9 August 2008-

Like the slow steady, forward march of time, so to is my progress on my projector. . . . . uhhh, ya. So, once again I have spent a few more of my precious hours drilling, cutting, sanding, and generally making a mess all over my self, my tools, and my garage. Sometimes I wonder if my Jeep gets sad when I leave it outside. Hopefully one of these days I will reclaim my garage for it's intended use, protecting my baby.

Enough of the QQ, time for more pew pew! Ah yes, The List, oh how long and unending your demands are!


Great, lets see what can be done to widdle down The Mighty List a little bit. Let's drill some holes in something!


That was the pilot hole for a much larger hole that will become my "triplet focus mechanism holding sled". I made that name up all my own! Next! More drilling, this time pilot holes for the much larger holes that will become the three fan blow holes across the back of the PJ back panel.


The problem with drilling little, itty-bitty pilot holes? They don't make nearly enough of a mess!


Much better! Now this is what I call a mess, pile on the saw dust! Oh, and just in case you were wondering yes my workshop is the floor of my garage, and yes, I am sitting on the ground in white pants (sorry mom), I didn't learn nothing. Hey, I own a washing machine, I just make it work a little harder than most. Also, this next pic was taken by my roommate who is equally as much a nerd with equally nerdy projects. Just not as much 1337 skillz as me!


Ok, so at this point I run into my first problem. Ok, I screwed up, but only a little bit, and more importantly it can be fixed, mostly. See, here's the thing, for some of the larger measurements I had to convert my millimeters in to inches. I have a nifty little converter I found on the net, one that converts mm to inches, and one that converts inches to mm. This helped but it still left me with having to convert decimal inches to fractional so I could actually use it on a tape measure. Huge pain in the ass! Somewhere in the sea of numbers I got my conversion wrong and ended up staring at my back panel for a good long while trying to figure out why it looked off and what I did wrong.


Well, here's part of the issue. That should read 402mm, its currently at 424mm. Yes, after I did all the crazy mm to decimal inch to fractional inch conversion my roommate lets me borrow his longer bubble level with metric. ...Sigh...


Oh well, live and learn. No worries though, a little re measuring and then re-re measuring to make sure this time I was able to simply remove the excess.


After that it was simply re drilling my pilot hole and cutting the third fan blow hole. Hooray for more sawdust!


So, here's what the end product looks like. I know, I know the holes are a bit off. It'll still work but it kinda bothers me. Only time will tell if it eats away at me enough to redo the whole piece.


Finally here it is with the fans set on it. I still need to drill the mounting holes for the fans but this gives you a good idea of how it will look.
* Too many pics * (Forums said, "Not in my house, beeotch!".)

All right that is it for another hard days work in The New Hoobie Workshop. More to come very soon as I still have more done than I have time to worklog.

As you have found out, you can only link up to a max of 10 pictures per post. After that, should you want to post more, you'll need to create another post after about 1 minute. The delay is to stop pesky bots.

Good luck with your build.

If you end up re-doing the piece, I recommend that you go with just two fans. It should be adequate to cool the PJ if your airflow path is tightly sealed. There will be less noise and you can use the space on the back board between the fans to mount electronics (thermostat, wire terminals, etc.) I cool one 150W PJ with one fan and a second 575W PJ with two fans that are about the same size as yours.

Ya, i thought about going with just two fans but it ended up that I had the room for three so that's what I decided to go with. My theory has always been get as many fans and get as big as will fit, then you just throttle them down. That way you get the most CFM with the least RPM.

Hoobie

www.Hoobie7.com

DIY Projector Build

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-12 August 2008-

Hey! A new update, it's crazy, I know! Ok, so it's been a few days, but in the grand scheme of things a few days isn't really that bad is it? I've been a bit lazy this week, work has been tiring me and the man keeps trying to keep me down! Or maybe I'm just lazy. Enough crying, on with the progress.

First up, cutting out the center hole in the triplet sled. The problem here was that I didn't have a hole saw that was the right size for this hole. I decided to try another tool I have, my Dremel with a special hole cutting adapter. Unfortunately this adapter was meant to do plunge cuts through drywall and things of that nature. The special rotary cutting bit has a spiral that pushes the sawdust downward, out the other side of the cut. The problem here was I was cutting 3/4" MDF the plunge cutter doesn't go that deep. So, I had to end up doing the cut in several sections and depths.



As I said before the rotary cutting bit spirals downward to push outthe sawdust away from the Dremel. Since I wasn't going all the way through the bit just ended up shoving all the sawdust down into the groove. I ended up having to use a jig saw blade I found laying around to dig the sawdust out of the groove, otherwise the groove would get packed full and the bit would start to heat up and actually burn the wood!



After much painstaking labor and intense rotary cutting action I finally made it all the way through. Oh, and I did have to turn the piece over and go to town on it from behind to be able to make it all the way through. All and all, though, it made a pretty good cut with just a little uneveness that I cleaned up with the drum sander on the drill press.



Next up was the front face piece. This one was getting a slightly different cut to it but same procedure. Drill a center point pilot hole then fire up the Dremel and follow the same procedure as before.



The difference here is that there was two, offset pilot holes that basically gave me two half circles that looked remarkably like this.



With those two cuts made I simply had to jigsaw the last little bits out. Again, some serious sanding was needed to even things out and get things looking pretty.



And here's a shot with the two pieces together to check for a good line up. Looks pretty good to me!



Finally, the three main fron pieces can be test fitted together for the first time. Note that the entire outside of the PVC piece has also been sanded. This was necessary, especially around the bottom of the piece, to get it to fit in the sled. I'm pretty sure I removed about a foot worth of thickness of the PVC pipe, which of course made a huge mess again. In the end it all woked out and everything fits together beautifully.



All together! Yeah!



Oh, and I also finished drilling the holes for the fan mounting bolts. Here's a shot of the fans all mounted and looking good.

A couple more!
And from the back.

Finally, here's a shot of my brand new router bits I got for my Dremel. These will get used soon. On a side note, I got these at Home Depot, on sale, the last set they had, after not finding them at Lowes or Menards. WOOT!

Ok, that's it for now, hopefully more to come soon. I am now caught up with the worklog so I'm gonna have to get back to work if I want to have anything to talk about. See ya!

Thanks
Hoobie7

DIY Projector Build

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-16 August 2008-

Time for more updates! In todays episode we'll be tackling the exhaust struts, routing some channels, and as usual, drilling some holes. Enjoy!

Alright, let's start off with some exhaust struts. These will be the two pieces on the back that the plywood or sheet metal attaches to in order to deflect any light leakage through the exhaust fans. First we'll draw it out. Oh, how I love trying to draw a decent arc!



Once that was done I was able to cut it out, slap it down, and trace out the second. Once they were both cut out I clamped them together for a good even sanding.



Next up was routing out the grooves on both side, top and bottom for the sheet metal to slide into. For this I decided to go out and purchase the proper routing bits for my dremel since I had so much trouble with the nultipurpose cutting bits from earlier. I should have just used the multipurpose cutting bit, it would have probably been easier. Here's the setup: 1/8" routing bit with the adjustable fence installed to keep me following the edge of the wood.



My first pass showed amzingly good results! I t cut straight, flat, true, and clean....that was the last time it worked that well. Later, after this pic was taken I realised that these grooves should go all the way through the end to meet up with the back piece. Here's the back piece with it's grooves. These went pretty well too, but required more force on my part to keep it moving. *Blurry pics FTW!*



In this pic you can kind of see where I came back later to cut the grooves the rest of the way through the end. You can also kind o fsee the scorch marks only on the ends. The bit was pretty much shot by this point, doing less cutting of wood and more burning of wood.



Now, let me stop here for a moment and offer a little public service announcement for any of those looking to use a similar tooling method. This I learned the hard way.

***Routers, and more specifically, router bits are one way tools! Used properly the tool will try to pull into the wood, pulling your rake up against the edge of the board giving you good clean lines as shown above. Make sure you know which way the bit spins and make sure your routing the right driection! If you come at it the wrong way the router will try to push the rake away from the edge and try to climb out of your work piece.***

This is the end result of that mistake. Something I knew and never should have done!



Oh well, live and learn! It will be fixed. Next was to drill some holes. These holes will be what mounts the back panel to the two side panels.



And just to add a touch of class, and because my drill bit kit comes with the bit, I countersunk these holes. This will also help when it comes time to mount the exhaust struts.



Here's a shot of the back panel. As far as I know this piece is done and ready for assembly. Now if the rest of the pieces would just catch up!



That's it for this evening, more to come soon!

Hoobie7.com

DIY Projector Build

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Holy depths of hell, I'm bringing back my thread from the depths of unspeakable places to let you boys and girls know that I'm not dead yet!
Good, on with the update!

-20 April 2009-

That's right bitches, I'm back! Oh I'm sure you've missed me, and how I have missed you all so much! It has been a long time coming but here it is, another update. So, lets jump right in before I get all emotional. Now, an entire winter has passed with nary a peep from this website. But the smoke is rising from the chimneys and the factory is back in business. I have had a few issues to deal with that slowed me down and I'd like to start with those in my own defense.

Tom, (my old roommate) this one is for you. Love ya buddy, you dumb ass! So one day Tom thought it would be a good idea to grab the street sign laying on the ground across the street and prop it up so people could know where they are, he acts with good intentions just not a lot of foresight. Mind you this is a 30 pound, 8 foot tall piece of steel that he propped up against my mailbox. Even without seeing the picture any "normal" person can probably predict what happens. That's right, a breeze blew it over and ripped my mailbox right off the post. Good job numb nuts!


Next excuse: A roof leak in my new town house. At this point the house was only about 9 or 10 months old, but because I wasn't the original owner the contractor that built it would do nothing for me, dicks. That's ok though since they didn't actually build any of it anyway. One call to the sub-contractor that actually put the roof on and they sent out several guys who went up moved around some flaps around a vent or something and it's never happened again. Now I just need to repaint. Yes that is a pouch of water between the paint and drywall, I had to cut it open and drain it!


Alright enough with the excuses on to the progress! First I got these neat key hole plates from Ace Hardware that should work perfect for the back piece to direct the fan airflow up and to restrict light flooding out the back of the PJ.


Next I cut the three frames that will hold the fresnels and LCD. I stole this idea from Windcalmer's PJ I believe. Yoinks, thanks dude! All three pieces were clamped together and cut as one to try and keep them as identical as possible.


Next up I went back to the fresnels, the sides were already cut to size now I just needed to cut the top and bottoms off. I actually cut these off center putting the center point 18mm lower to compensate for the lens shift I'm planning on building into it.


A quick pic of the mirror holders that will be used for the fresnels and LCD. They've been cut down to the minimum needed to hold the panels without obstructing anything.


Here are the four main pieces after a couple rattle can coats of flat black.


And after assembly with lamp ballast bolted in to it's proper place.


This will be my exhaust system: 3 120mm Vantec Stealth fans. These fans will be thermally throttled and will have a delayed shutoff when the PJ is turned off and is still hot. More on that later.


Next I installed a pair of wooden dowels in the middle to hopefully help keep things square and parallel. After a quick shot of paint and some more holes were drilled into the side panels they were strategically installed to not obstruct the light.


Ok that's it for tonight, but I promise there will be more to come soon. Actually I might have promised that last time too, but this time I totally really mean it!

Hoobie

Dude, you just made my day and my whole PLOG worth it. Glad to see that one of my ideas is helping. Looks GREAT!

One thing, what are you using the keyhole plates for? That kinda confused me?!?!?!

It's so he can slip the fan exhaust duct off the back when he wants to.
S'pretty ingenious.