Hey guys, I decided that making a plog would probably be helpful in building my projector, plus others can learn from the many mistakes that i'm bound to make!

My biggest problem so far has been trying to get the wood etc cut because I dont have many tools, just a power drill and a handsaw.

Parts:
Samsung 512n
IKEA reflector
Venture H75 ED28 400W bulb
Ballast
220mm/330mm Fresnal lenses
Standard lumenlab triplet
120mm 115V AC Fan
Lexan Polycarbonate


So far I haven't got much to show you guys, but i'll be updating the thread soon enough.

Stripped my LCD and applied some silicone to the edges, I hope what i've got is enough, it didnt seem to want to really fill into the slots that well because the nozzle was pretty wide, but i'll test it out tomorrow.



Just finished cutting the frame for my 220mm fresnal. Gonna sandwich it between these two pieces, there should be 1/4 inch overlap over the lens on each side. I cut it out of 3/16 MDF board, it took about an hour each to saw off the pieces. Now I just have to make one for the other fresnal. That notch in the bottom left is for my power/input cables.

Got most of the enclosure set up today, as well as mounted the mogul base to the side of the enclosure. The first piece of wood attached to the base is just there for spacing. The second piece of wood thats attached to that is my ghetto adjusting mechanism, though its not much of a mechanism, just a piece of board with a lot of holes drilled in it so that i can unscrew and rescrew it to a new position.



As you can see I went for a box in box focusing mechanism, not the best craftmanship but i guess it'll work.

Today I finished wiring in the fan and ballast, as well as a simple on off switch. I have my wiring set up so that the switch operates the ballast (and eventually the LCD once i put it in). The fan bypasses the switch and turns on as soon as the power is plugged in.



I went to home depot, radioshack and frys looking for the female power socket connector, none of them had it. I ended up hacking one out of an old computer powersupply that I had lying around.

today i finished my projector. Well, more or less.

Theres a lot of tweaking to do, but lemme show you what I got done.

Here i've got all of my components put in, ready to fire up the lamp and test an image on the wall.



Another view


This is my first test image, it didn't really live up to my standards, so i decided to paint my box. Projected on the inside of my garage door.



I've seen most of the people on these forums like to paint their boxes black, and I definitely think that would improve the contrast on the image, but I decided to do my box a little differently. I painted the box black in front of the first fresnal, and before that I painted everything white. I wanted to increase the brightness and uniformity of the image, and I believe that painting the light compartment white improves it.





I dont have a luxmeter or any way to truly test if the image was any better, but I personally feel like the image that I got was a LOT better after painting the case. I dont have a picture of these test images before the paint, but they definitely didnt come out this nice. These images were projected on my garage door as well.




I used the auto feature to take the pictures.

Looks like a success to me! Nice job!

How far away is the lamp from your rear fresnel? Looks great btw.

From just a tool of hand saw & power drill, you have done a spectacular job on your wood works! If I were to do it with just a hand saw, I think the box would look like an item from Salvador Dali pictures.

Looks great for me. Well done.

Its about 215 mm away I think. I'm going to try and mess with the distances a little though to do some tweaking. When I get home from college in a month i'll post some more pictures of it