Hey, your friendly neighborhood overkill-planner here.

Has anyone used >400w MH bulbs w/ any success? Have any recommendations on which ones one should try, etc?

I'm going to hold back on buying a lamp until I see the capabilities of a condensorlense demonstrated, but I wouldn't mind picking up something with a bit higher lumen output.

The availability seems to rather oddly jump from 400 watts to 1000 watts, though I keep seeing 575's referred to as a film industry standard light. What relatively cheap options(soft cap: $100, hard cap: $150) are out there for >400w to 1kw?

And is there any info out there on arc size?


Specs: 3k-6k color temp, CRI >60, >400w, manageable package
List:

http://www.1000bulbs.com/category.php?category=125 (note: vendor not recommended, see horror stories)
http://www.purelandsupply.com/item.jhtml?U...37&PRID=1380614
http://www.businesslights.com/index.php?cPath=24_275
http://www.businesslights.com/index.php?cPath=24_78

Edit:
In my search, I've found the mother of all OHPs, for anyone interested: The 3M 9850 uses a 575 watt short-arc metal halide bulb (called HMI apparently) that's standard in the film industry in conjunction with a reflector / condensor to put out 17,000 ANSI lumens!!! There are several other OHPs that use this bulb, but apparently this has the best optics of the bunch.

Unfortunately, the bulbs are generally priced to a replacement budget or to a production environment, both of which are far beyond the scope that a DIYer has. A person on DIYAudio has sourced some bulbs/ballasts from a store in China, and they can get them relatively cheaply, but at only 900 hours per bulb (short arc bulb = short life bulb), it's still too rich for my blood.

I'd like any info / speculation that you can contribute on whether a 1kw bulb could be used with any kind of effectiveness - the arc size is a limitting factor already, I'm not sure if a 1kw bulb would even be usable, or at all efficient. None of the specsheets I've seen list arc length

I believe its been mentioned around here several times that 1kW is a too much light, and that the LCD image will appear washed out with that much light behind it .......

With that said,I believe there is a 600W MH out there, I dont know if it would be toooo much light .... but ... someone should try ...

Wonder if theres a way you could use two 250 watt bulbs in one projector. Or maybe even two 400 watts.

There are ways to do it in theory, involving beamsplitters + prisms, they're just terribly inconveniant/complicated, and probably lose quite a bit of the output.

The thing is, if we have a formula to use 2 bulbs in practice, we can take 3x+ the amount of light off one bulb as we do now simply by putting one set of optics in each axis.


I really wouldn't mind a 600w bulb, if I could find one with decent specs that isn't unreasonably priced.

I found one that seems to be viable: The Osram Powerstar HQI-1000 has a 50% survival life of 7500 hours, has >90 CRI, 90,000 lumens, a 31mm arc length, upper 5000's color temp(there are several choices in this range). The only downside to it is the enhanced danger of a jacket-less bulb (Though it may not be highly pressurized, havn't checked), which I'm willing to tolerate (Esp due to the fact that it's likely to last me two years of 10 hours/day).

When you're looking at TCO for a particular bulb, you have to look at wattage as well as the cost of the bulb. If a 1kw bulb(8 cents an hour elecricity) lasts 10,000 hours and costs $100, that's 9 cents an hour total. Likewise, a higher bulb cost is a trivial addition to the overall TCO with the lumenlabs bulb - $50 for 20,000 hours is a quarter of a cent per hour. The electricity is about 3.2 cents an hour.

With this, I justify a somewhat higher bulb cost. This begins to break down with short arc bulbs, however. $100-$200 for a 750-1000 hour bulb is typical once you pass 400 watts, and I couldn't stomach anything near there, nor the hassle of replacing the bulb that often.

A 31mm arc is 1/3 the arc length of most of the 1kw bulbs out there - which I couldn't manage to even simulate working well in a projector. It's not far off from the LL arc length, so I think it'll be usable. It's still a much higher gap than the run-of-the-mill short arc metal halide + xenon bulbs, and so will have a much longer life.

Middle of the road = found.

Now I just need to track down a source to buy them.

Graphs here: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread....6788#post596788
edit: Lamp here: http://www.aalighting.co.uk/product_info.p...00e2dcf03b6887f

I am just wondering why would u want to have 1000w bulb in your projector?
Are you going to project like 200+ inch screen or something?

How about something like this? A 600W conversion lamp. Specs: 4000K temp, 50,000 lumens E40 form(10.24"L x 1.8"Dia tubular) Runs on a 600W HPS ballast. ~$100 ea.

http://www.specialty-lights.com/901845.html

Any takers?

Am unsure of burn position. Might be base up but it might be universal burn. Needs more research.

[edit] Or this one:http://www.businesslights.com/product_info...af07d5e74bb13d0

BT37, 72000 initial lumens and universal burn position, 4000K for $45.

Do I need a reason
I'd just like the capability to be as bright as needed - Right now(and this changes often), I'd like to do an 8ft by 5ft screen, about 112" diagonal. With 1000 watts, it'll be roughly the same brightness as the LL projector on a 70" screen.

Deathray: Definitely not bad, but I can't find it documented on their site (the 750w HPS conversion has a 2" arc, however). I'd like to keep the arc as small as possible, while still having decent light. I'm willing to spend slightly more because the bulb isn't a huge cost compared to the electricity it consumes - that lamp is about half a cent per hour in replacement, compared to about 4.8 cents an hour in electricity.

I may even be selling some of these, if there's a significant min. order quantity.

Maybe you can use the BT37 with the 600 watt ballast, since it is a universal burn position. While it is designed for 1000W it may work just as well with 600W.

No, it wouldn't I've only partially wrapped my mind around how plasma arcing effects a circuit, but it's something like an LED - you have a certain amount of resistance to prevent the bulb from passing too much current.

The reason I can't use the BT37 1kw bulbs is that they have a 4" or so arc length, which is far too large for my purposes.

Availability for the HQI-TS 1000w bulbs is crappily documented. Their (unofficial, had to email their actual distributor to find a link to) US distributor quotes $700+ for a quantity that may be 1 or may be a box of 6, their(the only one I could find that had an online catalog) UK distributor quotes $700+, their third world distributors quote $300-$600, and an unofficial UK distributor has the bulb for $159.

Datasheets are few and far between for most of OSRAM's HQI bulbs, and they appear to either have competing products using the same terminology, or people are selling them unbranded. As their competitors have distinctly different names for their similar products, I'm guessing it's the latter.

Currently trying to confirm the manufacturer with the $159 UK site and find out what kind of ballast will work w/ it. I'm really glad I've found a cheap source, these bulbs look great on paper. Now I just hope I don't run into a $2000 ballast price or anything.

Why not get a 1000+ bulb and then put a piece of tinted glass between the light and the lcd and the lamp?

With a 1000 Watt bulb you could pump out 115000 lumens. Slap a 10% tinted window and you drop that to 103500. On top of that, as the bulb get's closer to the end of it's life, you could remove the windows to make it useable to the last drop.

With a 450 Watt bulb you're pushing 80000 lumens. As it get's dimmer, there is no correction, just new bulbs.

You can find both bulbs with the same average life. I think the 1000W would be useable for a longer time though.

Good luck not frying your LCD with a 1000W bulb. Remember that their is such thing as too much light for a home theater PJ. Also, while the bulb will have light degradation, it is actually rated for 20,000 hours, and should be very ueable for 10,000 hours. Most likely you will be moving on to something new before you are replacing your bulb.

Also, with a 1000w bulb, you would really lose those cost savings over a commercial pj in your electric bill. A 1000w bulb running a couple of hours a day will provide a noticeable change.

i honestly cant think of anyone on this forum that has a finished projector that doesnt want a little bit more light output from it. Our projectors are not bright enough yet, if i wouldnt have wasted all my money on trying to find material for a screen to make these projectors a tick brighter i would gladly try out a bigger bulb. The 17 inch box has way more than enough room for a bigger bulb. Someone do this quick please so i can follow.

This guy built one with a 1kw bulb:

http://www.hommie.net/construction.htm

but then again he also added double-paned-argon-filled glass between his lamp and the rest of his box.

It says "but I still didn't need the argon glass," at the end when he mentions the 1kw bulb.

I'm amazed that he used an ellipsoidal reflector and didn't fry something. That steel reflects IR just as well as light, and cooling it would be a bitch. Maybe that's a viable choice though, for long-arc bulbs... (If anyone wants to experiment with this, checking out cheap long-arc bulbs and a cheap ballast with a huge ellipsoidal reflector might be a decent start).

And the lamp doesn't even have any kind of cooling...

I'm totally contacting him for details on the lamp setup.

I'm not sure, but it looks pretty bright. This shot is actually properly exposed:



MadCraiz, a 450w metal halide bulb will not put out 80,000 lumens.

And, in the way of progress, I think I've given up on the DC lighting people responding to my email. I'll be trying to get ahold of OSRAM for a distro on the ballasts, as DC's catalog doesn't say anything about 1kw ballasts. I know that the capacitor differs, but other than that, I'm sort of clueless what transformer(Or is it just a huge inductor?) and which igniter I should be using. The products are on OSRAM's mire of a catalog, but without any info whatsoever, and I can't find the product numbers in a google.

I have found a diagram that explains these rather cryptic pics on the bulb product page:



This, courtesy of "sylvania lamps":

I'm still sorta wondering what K+S is.

I'd love to be gung-ho about this, but I don't have the knowledge, balls, or wallet to do this without at least responses from companies. I'll assume that the bulb is the right one (It has the proper terminology), but I'm going to need to find someone who can answer my questions re the ballast in order to go ahead w/ it.

My bad...I was just comparing specs off of the bulb store's site.

Paraphrased summaries of new info:

OSRAM:

We're not going to tell you anything about what ballast can be used with your bulb. We'll tell you three manufacturers (two of which are wholesale only) that manufacture ballasts of all types, without indicating which types. Oh, and there's a possibility of the bulb "HQI-TS 1000w/d/s" being from a different manufacturer. Don't get fried by the shortwave UV, we don't want a death on our hands, and have a nice day!

DC Lighting, a haiku:

A week of silence
A lookup: other address
Bulb confirmation

Ballast manufacturers:

I'm finding igniters marked with multiple voltages, I've found ONE ballast/igniter that's officially recommended for this bulb type(wholesale only), and everything I find is 220v/240v only. I suspect that when I see a range of wattages from 75w-400w for an igniter, that it's not as exact a science as I thought it was.

Could anyone that has a friend in the lighting field try and find out how particular MH lamps (medium-short arc lamps, in this case) are about what ballast/igniter they use?

I'm going to try and exhaust some more options, search for more distributors of ballasts from 'approved' manufacturers, and try and get OSRAM to say that a particular model will work with their lamp tonight. If I don't get a 120v package, I guess I'll have to resort to using an inefficient 240/120v converter rated for 1.5kw.

It seems that my email to tridonic atco has been pinging around from one person to another for a week, but I've finally gotten a response
These are parts that they've recommended for this particular lamp, finally

A bit off the topic maybe but cannot help thinking, anyone thought of what kind of bulbs do you have inside a TV which lights up the screen. These bulbs last for ever. Well My Toshiba TV is 15 years now and still going.

[quote=GizmoTech,Mar 29 2005, 11:58 PM]
anyone thought of what kind of bulbs do you have inside a TV which lights up the screen.

there are no bulbs inside a tv tv's use a crt "cathode ray tube" there are three guns inside the tube one for each color red, blue, green,. Each gun shoots an electron beam to its corosponding phosphor pixel color at a very high rate of speed.
the beams sweep from left to right and top to bottom.If you could slow it down you would see it tracing on the screen the picture/video information.

Hope this helps,
Peter

Yup, a completely different tech. A cathode ray tube creates an electron beam which propels many electrons per second at a phosphor sheet. The phosphor sheet lights up where an electron strikes it, emitting visible light. Aiming the beam is accomplished by the fact that electrons have a negative charge, and so can be deflected (changed direction) by a magnet. So you put two electromagnets, one for X and one for Y, right in front of(on top/bottom and right/left) where the electrons are emitted. Then, you modulate the power applied to the electromagnets a certain number of times a frame to get the beam so that it moves from the bottom left line to the bottom right line, then goes back and traces through line 2, etc. Then, you modulate the beam's power once per pixel so that you have different brightness levels.

And bam! you have a black and white CRT.

Not sure what juicetricity costs where you live, but here it is ~$.08 per kWH. So a 1000 watt bulb would cost $.08 per hour to run vs. $.032 for the 400 watt bulb.

If you ran your PJ on average of 3 hours/day for a month (90 hours), cost would be $7.20 for the 1000watt bulb vs. $2.88 for the 400watt bulb.

I doubt that is going to send anyone to the food stamp line.

I hope no one building a movie projector is counting pennies down to this level. If you are, you probably shouldn't be messing with a project like this.

while your point holds true, and I completly agree with you ....

the input into our projectors isnt the output .... they are far fromm 100% effecient ....

so if you have a 400W lamp, then you will be drawing MORE than 400W from the line .... likewise with 1000W ....

Therefor the cost are a little more than what you will caculate, if you do the simple 400W vrs 1000W ..... Agents caluclations are close enough to show you the difference though ....

As people are getting less and less hesitant to try 1kw....
And the people who said that this much light would destroy the image have been proven wrong....
And I still havn't gotten a job to afford building a PJ with this....
And people are speculating on low-arc 1kw lamps, and this took me weeks of research....
And we finally have a working pro lense....


*BUMP*

Thread summary:
The lamp is the Osram Powerstar HQI-1000TS W/D/L - A lamp intended for stadium floodlights and spotlights. Has a 31mm arc, perfect for our uses, but is very hard to find. The MSRP appears to be in the $700-$800 range from the official resellers they give, but other several outfits seem to sell it for quite a bit less. The ballast is even harder to track down, but I eventually got a bite.

Their target audience is lighting engineers who know their shit and will be designing this into dozens of stadium fixtures for millions of dollars - that's the reason it took me weeks to track down specs and purchase places.

specs
lifetime
DC lighting, UK web outfit that apparently is selling these surplus @ $159
Igniter, ballast available from Tridonic in georgia - they're the type of place that has salesman rather than a web order system, but they'll sell you 1 of each via email/phone, $254
A 220/240v circuit is needed for the ballast - if that's not available, you need a transformer costing up to $100.

The Ushio bulb is about 12% efficient (33000 lumens ~= 48 watts.) This means that 88% of the energy (352 watts) is used to heat the air around the bulb. Coil and core ballasts consume ~10% in addition to the bulb's wattage, known as ballast loss. Using an electronic ballast generally limits the total wattage used to the rated bulb wattage. (~1% ballast losses and the bulb's consumption is dropped slightly) So, if you're using an E-ballast, Agent707's figures are spot on.