Hello to all in the forum!

This seems to be the place most of those in the know hang out so here goes my very first projector PLOG...

The tasty ingredients:

LL Ushio Bulb / Mogul Base / Electronic Ballast
Benq 567s V2 - Refurb (No dead pixies!)
Ikea napkin reflector
LL 1015 Standard lens set with fresnels

Pics will follow shortly in another post.

After quite a bit of searching in the forums, I decided to go with a streamline box ala Joe's Bakery, Johnny5, etc. I drew up everything in Solidworks until it all looked copacetic.

EVERYTHING on this box is adjustable (in theory at least). The lamp and reflector have 3-axis adjustment on them (thanks Clamps for the idea - tried to improve on it a bit). The triplet has a 4-point, spring-loaded, tilting mechanism because I plan on having a higher than normal keystone angle (ceiling mounted). Rear fresnel / LCD / and front fresnel are on a sled. The Rear Fresnel / LCD disance is fixed per spec - but the front fresnel will hang from bolts which will allow me to adjust the LCD / front fresnel distance.

Lesson #1, things looks easier to make on paper (or a computer screen in this case) than they actually are. I didn't heed the warnings about "just place it in a rectangular box first" ... Long story short, this box has been very difficult to build! I slathered it all together with wood filler and epoxy, then sanded the living daylights out of it. It sure looks purdy, but it is not entirely square . I would say the dimensions are off from perpendicular by about 1/8". My dad's table saw really needs to be aligned badly.

I plan on compensating by not measuring my optic dimensions with respect to the box, but with respect to plumb lines that i will lay down in the box. I will level the box with shims and then drop a plumb bob to determine the true axis. Does this sound like a good plan? I am afraid that I might have nackered the project by creating a slightly trapezoidal box.

Enter the next snafoo. I ended up rebuilding the frames 3x :angry:! The first time, I framed the LCD and collector fresnel in 3/4" ply. This didn't leave a sufficient distance in between for cooling! I tried a belt sander to get it to about 1/4" gap, but I thought I'd better not put it into service only to discover that my projector runs hot! The second time, I revised the design, and created a sled for the rear fresnel / LCD / keystone fresnel. It looked great ... BUT ... my slots were 1/2" deep instead of 1/4" - the fresnels were swimming in place. Rather than shim it all together, I rebuilt the assembly, this time with the proper 1/4" deep slits. Works like a charm although the LCD hasn't been stipped and mounted in place yet. I am hoping that the LCD is about the same thickness as the fresnels ... It would suck to strip it and learn that I need to rebuild the frames for a fourth time!!

Pics up next

First the outside box. No holes or slots have been cut as yet. The e-balllast will be mounted outside on the back.

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Okay - I'm having posting difficulty here. I guess only 100K per post ... Multiple posts here I come!

Side view of the outside - holes will have to be cut at the back to allow for the lamp and reflector adjustment (detailed in a later post)

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Here's the top view. You can see the sled and the temp glass frame - they haven't been positioned or attached (Just there for the picture!) Also you can see the holes for dual fans up top. These are 24V fans which will be regulated down to about 12V with an adjustable voltage regulator I designed. The whole thing cost about $10 because I found an old printer's wall-wart in the garbage as a power supply.

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Front view without the triplet assembly in place (detailed later).

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Here is a view of everything put together. The triplet mount is out a little ways just for the picture.

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A lot of people (including myself) had troubles designing a framing system for the LCD. Here's my solution.

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Note that the slits that you see on the outside braces will hold bolts from which the front fresnel will hang. This will allow the LCD/front fresnel distance to be varied as well as allowing the centers of the rear and front fresnel to be aligned.

Top view of the LCD sled - you can see the rear slit is for the fresnel, the front slit is for the lcd. The "outside" slit is for the keystone fresnel.

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Another view of the sled rails. Also note the spacers on the bottom of each slot - necessary to center the LCD and fresnel vertically.

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On to the triplet assembly. This consists of two parts: the triplet slide mount, and the triplet tilt plate. The slide mount will move in and out on a rail consisting of aluminum L channels. Here's a pic:

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Here is a picture of the tiplet tilt plate next to the slide mount.

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The tiplet will be mounted on the tilt plate which will be suspended from the slide mechanism with spring loaded bolts. I think you can see how it all fits together. Here's a pic:

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The cool thing with this mount is that you should be able to adjust for alignment and keystone focus anomalies. This is my first projector so it remains untested until I fire it up . I can get a good 20 degree tilt with this setup - should be more than sufficient for fine tuning. Here's a pic of one of the side's lowered:

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Next up - the reflector and lamp mounts. These will require some modification because they are not as steady as I would like. But adding an extra spring-loaded post should take care of that. Thanks to Clamps for this idea. Do a search for his lovely computer-generated drawings. I don't have a drill press so drilling perpendicular and matching holes was a pain in the a**.

I modified his design a bit. First, instead of aluminum plates (expensive), I used pergo floor tile (rigid and free). Second, for asthetic reasons, I didn't use wing bolts on the outside of the box - I epoxied nuts in place instead. The centering adjustment bolt does not extend outside the box by virtue of a coupling nut epoxied to the base plate.

A pic is worth more than my rambling:

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Here is how it looks from the outside of the case:

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Here is a side view showing the clamping detail. The side-wall of the projector box is clamped between the mounting plated with the two shorter slotted bolts from the outside of the box. The hex bolt can be turned to vary the centering of the lamp/reflector. A pic:

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Nice design. I like your workbench, it seems to have a number of "tools" that would make the work a lot more enjoyable, however, perhaps overuse may not make for the most accurate work...

yeah supra is right. nice pj by the way lots of gizmos. if you think about it tho if you ever cut yourself while at that workbench it cant get infected with all that alch.

Hehe ... the alky is for the projector launch party...

Okay, so a little here and there to ease the slow moments whilst the epoxy sets ...

Seriously, I was on such a tight schedule this weekend to get these shots taken and into the PLOG that I didn't even notice the background until I had finished posting the pics! Imagine MY surprise ... quite fortuitous.

BTW, I only drink on two occasions - New Year's and projector launches.

Finally got home from celebrating Mother's Day with my mum. Here are some of the original renderings of the box from solidworks. Interesting to see the match (or lack thereof) between the original design and the design as built.

First off the outside:

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The outside from another angle:

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Here's one of the guts:

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And last but not least - a detail of the sled mounting. This is the new design after the two failed attempts. I didn't model the bolts which extend from the sled to the front fresnel support but it gives you the idea.

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Let me know if there are any particular details I can post to help you out with your own designs.

I only drink on two occasions as well. When I am having a drink and when Im trying to decide if I should have another...

I think small amounts a beer and PJ contruction go hand in hand...as long as the power tools are all done with.

Cool designs Sonic. And if those are the only two times you drink, by the looks of it, you're very prepared!

I plan on having a friend help me build my PJ when my wife leaves for Cali later this month, and I offered beer as a payment for his troubles.

those are some really nice drawings and your box construction, although you say is off by 1/8" in square should be let be for now. when you project an image you should be able to adust focus problems on one or the other side/corner by moving the parts in your optics setup, mainly I guess the projection lens mount.

I really like the way you made your lens mount pivot in addition to sliding in and out, but realize that there are limits to the pivot and thus keystone adj... I don't think I've seen others do their keystone adjusting at the projection lens, but this should be very interesting when you post some results.

Great box and build!!

Thanks for the compliments guys (gals?) The projection lens tilts in addition to the keystone fresnel tilting. Most of the correction will be done by the fresnel tilt. The tilting lens is somewhat of an experiment on my part after reading 87 pages of the keystone thread! Some people reported correcting for focus problems with a high keystone angle by tilting the projection lens. Figured it couldn't hurt to include the feature - worst comes to worst, I leave the projection lens square to the box.

I built a triplet adjustment in with mine and it didnt help at all. Tell me if you have any different results.

Doh! My face now looks like your avatar's...

I must have misread your posts. I thought you had partial success with the tilting but it favored either the top and sides being in focus, or the bottom and sides being in focus. I am going by memory, but I am certain I read something like that in one of the posts here. I figured making a 4-point tilt mechanism would help that scenario further. Oh well - an extra $15 in bolts/springs and a bit of labor - chalk it up to experience. I'll let you know the results.

BTW, I am a glutton for punishment: I am also STRONGLY considering creating a Light Fusion screen. For those of you who don't know - read up about it on avsforum.com - but be forewarned, it's even a bigger bog to get info there than it can be on this forum at times. Basically, a "Light Fusion" screen consists of a mirror with a thin layer of paint on top. The mirror reflects some of the light back towards the viewer, just enough to create a sense of "Glow". Some claim it looks like a plasma screen. The screenshots look incredible but I am not done fully researching as yet... Anyone tried this type of a screen??

Well this is what happens when I tilt the triplet. Either the top left and right corners along with the bottom center come into focus, or the bottom left and right corners along with the top center come into focus. When this happens it causes the opposite to become blurry. Because of this I found it best to just leave the triplet pointing straight.

Your triplet has to be parallel to the projection screen, or it will be out of focus.

I would sugest getting into the chat area on irc or the java chat link in the forum (customers section and ask about the different build techniques used and tested) alot of this has been tried and proved or disaproved.

Nice work....

Here is what i made for a customer, maybe you can get an idea from it, I have it in solidworks also as you can see in the drawings.

http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5945

Joe

Joe - I'm honored to have you in my PLOG
I should give credit where credit is due - yours was the inspiration for my design.
Standing on the shoulders of giants as they say

After having many problems with stability, I scrapped this mounting design. I thought about it, and, although it would allow for total adjustability, there are few upsides to this design:

Upsides:
1) Allows lamp and reflector to be adjusted from outside the box.
2) Simple to make.

Downsides:
1) Requires holes in the side of the box.
2) Making minute adjustments would be difficult. Adjusting the horizontal without affecting the vertical would be next to impossible.
3) The reflector doesn't "ride" with the lamp - each change in lamp position would require a re-adjustment of the reflector.
4) The design is unproven - although some claim to have used it, I can't find any pictures to see it in action.

Because the downsides outweight the upsides in my mind, I decided to re-design a mount. I designed several attempts in solidworks that all would have worked but just seemed too much of a pain to make. I scrapped them all in favor of a design using a canabilized keyboard drawer. All I can say is, thank GOD for my Dremel - without it, nothing would have been possible. BUT - this thing does pretty much everything I want it to do. Adjustments in all 3 axis for lamp and reflector and the reflector rides with the lamp. THe only downside - have to adjust it from inside the box. I will post pics tomorrow after the JB-Weld cures overnight.

Pics up in a moment but I wanted to share a lamp mount design that I didn't end up using but might be of some use to others. This design uses flat 1/4" pergo floor tile for the rail slats but any rigid material will do.

Iso Views:

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I didn't completely model everything. This entire assembly is mounted to the side of the projector wall so as to sandwich the retaining plate (light lavender). The lamp and Reflector ride on a baseplate (purple) that is connected to the retaining plate via 1/4" diameter bolts. The bolts can be lengthened or shortened to control the spacing between the plates and thus the depth that the lamp extends into the case. The baseplate assembly moves freely in the horizontal direction. The horizontal rails also move freely in the vertical direction as a unit. This allows total x,y,z control of the lamp.

Here is a closeup of the rear view:

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And lastly, a sectional to show the "railing" detail. Some sort of frictional retaining bolt would be required on the baseplate to lock the position of the lamp in place.

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This design was a stepping stone that resulted in the ultimate design coming up next

The lamp/reflector mount I ultimately ended up constructing is very similar to the one outlined above but uses actual file drawer slides as rails. My keyboard drawer was cannibalized to produce the following:

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Here's a side view of the assembly. The drawer slides were cut to size with a dremel and then JB-Welded together overnight.

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The rails lock into position with a 1/4" wingnut that I drilled a hole for and tapped threads into:

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Wow - my hand is killing me typing so I hope this level of detail is helpful to y'all. I'm spending more time on the PLOG than on the projector

The next up is the lamp/reflector mount. This mount rides on the slide assembly created above. Both the lamp and the reflector are fully adjustable, and the reflector rides with the lamp for position changes. The unit has yet to be painted and a few springs, etc. still need to be mounted. The plates are made from the cannabalized keyboard drawer metal (same as computer case metal I think, 1mm?). I found a little bit of flex in the plates so I disassembled the until and reinforced the plates with another layer of sheet metal as detailed later.

First a couple of overview pics and then I'll go into some more detail.

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Another view:

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Here you can see how the reflector is adjusted towards and away from the arc. The angle can also be adjusted to make the reflector square with the collimating fresnel. The 4 bolts need to have springs placed to tension the assembly properly.

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Here's a closeup of the reflector mount. You will notice the channel in the center of the support plate. The plate is held to the aluminum L channel by two 1/4" bolts with washers. This is to allow the reflector to be be centered with the arc.

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Another view of the reflector mount. You can barely see, but that reflector has a fan guard JB-Welded to it for the bolt support structure. Also the channel is clearer in this pic:

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Here is a detail of the mounting plates:

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Note that the lamp plate and the reflector plate are separate from one another. This allows me to adjust the lamp without upsetting the reflector. The bolts can be adjusted to lower/lift/tilt the lamp plate. This allows the lamp arc to be centered in the box as well as compensate for bent Ushios

The reflector plate is fixed and rides on the slide assembly detailed above.

For those who would like to try this at home, make sure you use plates that dont flex.. I had to reinforce mine with two layers of sheet metal glued with JB-Weld to prevent the flex:

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Now I'm gonna take a break and put this whole thing together!

A day of painting and meditation. Thought about mounting, cooling, and focus mechanism while waiting for the paint to dry.

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The paint I used - highly recommended: high temperature resistant (to 1000F), sticks to metal with no priming, and fast drying.

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Whoa it was hot today! The components layed out on my "work bench" while taking a break from the sun. Time to quench that thirst ...

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The whole darn thing put together. This light mount is so purdy it's almost ashame to place it out of sight in the projector. Kinda looks like a satellite component ...

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Doo-doot---doot--doot. Hello earthling ... we come in peace ...

And another:

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DANGER Will Robinson, DANGER ...

Let's hope the projection is worth the effort .

An update - the good and the bad (and the ugly):

The good: my box is actually perfectly square! Earlier, I was using the t-square on the garage floor; apparently the floor isn't level . When I checked the box on a granite countertop (perfectly flat) - voila, instant squareness. One worry out of the way

The bad: My frames were hand painted with primer and black paint which was rather thick; It tended to drip into the slits that were routed for the LCD and fresnel. When I tried inserting the fresnel - it was way too tight, causing some bowing. I spent the last 2 hours scraping the paint from the slits with a blade - NOT a lot of fun. Live and learn

The Ugly: My sled. With the scraped off paint, it looks way ugly. I can also see the scraped slit walls through the fresnel. Hope it won't affect the projection.

The scraped slits:

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The fresnels slide in much easier now. Also note the do-hickey I bought at Home Depot to hang the front fresnel off of. The fresnel is binder clipped to a dowel that fits into the do-hickey. Totally adjustable