After a couple of months of planing and building I have finished the box for my next projector. I will be using the same samsung ltn 1556 lcd tv from the first projector. I still have to wire and place all lenses and electronics but I thought I would get this show on the road.


The first picture is the main shell. The large vertical slots are the air intakes. On the Inside of these intakes are boxes that face forward to block light leaks. These boxes will also house my air filters. The holes in the bottom will house the dolby virtual surround speakers that came with the lcd, and the round hole is for lamp adjustment from outside of the box. On the flipside is the IR eye for the remote.

second pic. is of the stand. This will replace my current coffee table, but will still house my surround/dvd system. I built slots into the sides to allow height adjustment for the angle of tilt. I spaced out the lateral supports to pass the surround's wires through. On the backside of the stand I will mount the electronic ballast.
Sorry the inside shots are so black that it is hard to see whats there ,but I wanted to have control of the reflections.

Ok, so the next pic. is of the shell on the stand and my light sled.
The light sled has holes cut into it to allow me to move the bulb and reflector left/right/up/down.
I will be using my ushio lamp for now but I made it so I can change to the new bulb or new reflector or what ever comes down the pipeline by adding or removing spacer blocks.
They lock in place with a wood washer on the other side. this will prevent light leaks through the holes. I still need to flash the light chamber.

I made the projector 2" taller (it basically has a sub floor) than normal to house my wiring, lcd tv controler and all the audio and video wires. It's kinda like having an n6 attached to the lcd. These requires some more room and a need to have a way to get the video cables into the box. I built side supports to hold the light sled up and to give me extra streangth for the base mount.
This also gave me room to mount the speakers there. This projector is movable and I want to be able to take it outside this summer and make a bigger outdoor screen for it. I don't want to rip out the surround speakers out of the house and this will work untill I set up some real speakers for outdoor use. Besides I figured they are there why not use them.

more of sled.

and I also made a lcd sled to house the lcd and lenses.
The airflow will come in from the front of the projector, go over and under the field lens over the top of the lcd and down between the lcd and the collminator lens, back up past the bulb and reflector, over the reflector wall (to block light leaks out the fans)and down to the fans.
The lcd sled is slotted in the bottom for forward/backward movement and bolts down to lock inplace.
The lenses are adjustable up/down/back/fourth ect.
The keystone setup is not all in place in the pict. However it will use the center pieces of channel for rails. Inside of those rails are thin strips of wood that will accept a second u channel. The second u channel has a hole to accept glass door hindges to hold the lens and allow it to piviot. The second u's interlock with the ones on the side of the sled and the wood prevents the second from tilting.The second u's have tapped holes in the top to lock it all inplace when I have it positioned. Hope that made some sort of sense? I will post pictures when I go to put it all in.

more

overhead shot and outside light adjustment hole.

light adjustment cover.

this is pretty simple but on the old projector every time I opened it up to make adjustments while the light was on I got blinded. this will block out most of the light so I can see what I am doing on screen. The other thing was I had a short time to make correction before it got to hot. Because of my airflow setup this second top will keep it cooling while I work. It also flashes the top.

Ok, for mounting the front and back panels I attached aluminum angle to the corners and drilled holes to allow me to bolt on the panels so I can remove them if I need to.
The front Big hole will recieve the lens housing. The opening under it will house the button panel. On the right side of the projector is a small hole for the IR reciever.

Allright, so the lens housing is made up of a 6" aluminum tube and 2 collets. the collets bolt together to hold it to the front. This allows me to move the whole lens assembly around in the big hole to align the projection lens. the projection lens will mount to the puck which will get wraped with velcro to seal out light leaks and allow some resitance so it won't move.

ok quick shot of the underside of the cover before it goes on.

Lot of thought put into this build. Keep it up, moose!

final two shots for tonight, box all assembled. With the lens setup I was able to shave of three inches of the bulk of the box(believe it or not but that is alot of fat to trim off). This is much smaller than my first projector. I had given that one extra room because I had no Idea what I would need for space. If you have questions, comments fire away.
Moose

2.00

Nice work, love the aluminum tube, is this by chance off the shelf or is this your welding handiwork?

sorry, but it is not off the shelf. My father owns a large machine/saw/coil winding shop which I work at. I cut the tube there. I could of gone crazy with the cnc's ect. and made the projector there but I am proud to say that I made it all myself at home. I made the projector so it could come apart easily so I could change things at any time! the collets I made out of mdf and cut the holes with a rotozip. the puck is also out of mdf. I used gorilla glue to bond the inside collet to the aluminum tube. anyway, this setup is just a prototype and I am probably going to remake the setup in the machine house once it is all proven out. I may make a moterized version or maybe just a threaded design. anyway I'll see how it all works once I flip the switch and go from there.
I love these things, there is always something you can do to make it better.

Excellent Moose.

Very nice!

Love the focus mechanism. I have noticed this with mine, shaving about 3 inches off the box would be a big difference.
Nicely done - lets see the results!!

looks great moose, love the stand. can't wait to see some screen shots

Thanks for the feedback guys. It will probably be about 2 weeks before I'm projecting with this one. I am waiting on my power supply setup to arrive and start wiring everything up. I will be using some of bladerunners products (Therm and high limit) in this projector. I will have to plan a teardown time for the swap over into the new projector because I still use the old one every night. I will be using the 2 120v fans, projection lens, lcd, and ushio and electronic ballast from the old projector. Everything else is new.

The only thing holding me back at this point is I want a 10 amp dpst rocker switch(can only find toggle switches so far). If anyone has a source please let me know!

Be happy to set you up with one of our PEM switches moose, write me: help@lumenlab.com

Thanks Brain,
Will do.
As a side note: I recieved my wiring kit today and it is awsome. Just what I was looking for. This will make a very nice, clean entry into the box.

Nice job moose.

Excellent work Moose, this is looking really good. If you do consider machining more of these great focusing assembly, I would be very interested in picking one up as I really dig the look

neda,
sounds good- My father is really impressed with the projectors and will help me produce these focus setups. I need some time to get this projector running to verify that it works without any flaws and then I am going to try to set up a lens that will allow manual focus but will also allow a remote controled moter to be installed.

I have also designed this projector so I can change the lens setup back and forth from the basic 15" lens and change over to the pro lens setup with a bigger/longer tube by just unbolting the collets and placing in the other. I am hoping to have a univeral 15" projector that will handle everything I want to do now and in the future.

neda,I am sorry to hear about your lcd, I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried about my change over. however I have saved up some $ incase it goes wrong.

I am trying to figure out what I would like to supply video to this projector. I have a Onkyo surround dvd player that I use now. the problem is that the component vid. does not work well and I get alot of noise out of it. I tried another dvd player with component that I borrowed and It worked and looked great. I currently use svid on the old projector for my movies, but I want more.
I am thinking about trying to use my laptop for movies but I need to find a card to get 5.1 audio out of it, and set it up as a htpc.
I am open to suggestions
I am also interested in using an xbox but if I am right, I need to mod it for component?
I don't know, maybe I will just pick up another dvd player and be done with it.

I really love the focusing mech, can't wait to see it in action.
I have personally decided to go the HTPC route to fully utilize the PJ's potential. Based on some results out there, and the fact that I have already everything I need except a few components I think that it will be ideal for me, and perhaps it'd be the right thing for you too if all you need is a sound card. I did not have a good experience with the scalers at all, and I do not own a very good progressive scan DVD player that I can spare (mine is set up on the main HDTV in the living room and my wife wants to keep it there).

In order to play DVDs in progressive scan mode from an Xbox you'd need to modify it.

Great work. Can't wait to see the projected image.