A few months ago on craigslist, someone offered a beseler-type opaque projector for free. Naturally, a grabbed it thinking I could gut the lens for my 15" perhaps a 15.4" in the future. Well, summers half over and here it sits in the garage. Now I also have my insignia 10.2 which I was going to insert in my ASK enclosure but it looks slight too tight a fit so I wondered if it would work on the opaque. And the answer is yes.

Now the only stumbling block in all of this is intent, which right now is low for me regarding diy pj bulding. Since halloween is
coming up however that may change but we'll see. Anyways, here's the opaque. Eventually it will become something




bottom


closeup of tray area- to be replaced by my panel


lighting area- easily replaceable but I need a bulb that's small enough to fit. Anyone have a suggestion?



So there you have it, a fully operational and free vertical just waiting for a 10" or even a 12"(if funds become available). Its also paintable so I'd would look cool in a nickel finish. Anyways, yet another project that forever waits to be completed.

Sigh...

Victor

Hah, very nice and you can't beat the price! Good find!

Hi, I managed to get one similar to your one for $10 and I thought that was good, but $0 is better. Mine is a great blue crackle finish. I have had it for about 3 months now and have a similar project in mind, eventually. Good luck with your project.

Yea I got 2 of them sitting in storage, I also wanted to make projectors out of them, but keep
the retro look they had, the only way I figured out was to add to the bottom making it
a tad taller and more heavy - when they already weigh a lot,

The weight and size kinda put me off of doing that - if you figure out how I may just copy your
idea

Good Luck

Well, I managed to test it out tonight (it still had a working bulb) and if already hit a couple of stumbling blocks:

First, the focus is inconsistent- whether its the freshnels being warped or the material I used to project ( a dora paper plate LOL) or even the lens remains to be seen.

Second, the max width I could get a fairly even focus was around 68", meaning that with a 16:9 panel I could at best muster a workable 78" image. Now thats no slouch but coming from a person who's built a 165" outdoor theater and a 110" indoor theater, I'm frankly not impressed.

I suppose I could change freshnels but I'm pretty sure that'll screw things up a bit- only one way to find out though

Did you guys ever figure out a way to use these? I got one of these Opaque Projectors as well, the bulb (1000watt) the mirrors, and lense all seem to be very high quality and the build is military spec.

I tried projecting a picture on the wall but it was really blurry, as I was about 15-20 feet from the wall.

Are these good for anything? Can the lense be salvaged? Or perhaps the housing modified to project a large HD image?

I like the look of these and they are somewhat portable and light weight, they are just huge.

Click to view attachment

How can I tell what type of lens this is and what the appropriate freshnels to use. The diameter of the lens appears to be 5-1/8" across and the distance from the mounting plate to the mirror is around 12" or so and the another 5-6" to the lens. There are no markings on the outside and i haven't opened the inside yet.

The final intention is to use a 17" on this bad boy.

Victor

What is the opaque projector's model number?

Its the Opaque 1000, made by the American Optical Company (out of Buffalo, NY), probably during the Korean War or thereabouts LOL