Current state of the PJ.

Parts list.

18" fl Buhl Triplet 450mmx 128mm

LG 17" LCD #L1752TX Antiglare striped

550mm/330mm fresnel

Lexan --- Removed!

Condenser lens 6" x 9" fl Pyrex from a 6" elliptical (Altman type) spotlight.

Lamp is a MHI 1200 watt Phillips Broadway double ended.

Ballast is a 600 watt S106 and a 400 watt S51 HPS ballast in parallel, with a 10uf added to the 600 watt and a 7.5uf 370vac cap added to the 400 watt ballast.

Reflector is from a 8" Colortran fresnel light.

Cooling.

LCD, Three 120mm 2000 rpm fans mounted inside the box


Light box, 2 x 80mm fans 2500 rpm with the hot air vented directly to the outside with a 3" flex duct.

Ballast, 1 120mm fan.

The ballast wiring is here.

http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?s...st&p=177930

It's finally time to get started on the projector. It's been a lot of fun learning about how all the parts work.

The projector I'm building is mainly going to be used for watching movies in the back yard drive-in style. I will have a nice large screen but how large will be determined by the amount of brightness I can get and the screen door effect that the LCD will make. The first screen I already have and is about 123 x 65"" The final screen may be around 150" to 200".

A large picture will require a vary bright PJ. This has been a problem with all the diy PJ. There is a lot to be said about the different lamps that can be used I tested 5 or so on the thread" A supper light engine." I will be using a 1200 watt lamp with a condenser system and a spherical reflector.

The lamps are from top to bottom.

Top is a HQI 400 watt

Second is the PJ lamp, A Phlips MSI 1200 watt ( I now have two)

The rest of the small ones are a bunch of OSRAM HTI Sharx 1200 watt used lamps I got a deal on They are the exact same sixe as a HMI 575. If you want to do some testing with high power lamps I will sell a few for cheep.



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And the reflector: It is for a 8" Colortran fresnel spotlight. Yes it looks like a car hubcap!

I want to add the Colortran fresnel light reflector part # and link if any one want's to try it. They do make a 6" fresnel light that may have a 6" reflector too but it is unknown the size or FL.

part # SMP-28058-00 8" colottran fresnel spotlight reflector from

http://lms.leviton.com/contactus.aspx


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The triplet if from a Buhl opaque projector from e-bay I now have two so I can test new light setups with out taking the other PJ apart. American optics makes most of the large triplets and might have made mine too. The fl is 450mm and the diameter is 128mm.

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The fresnels will be a 330mm/550mm

The box will be a hass curved shell with a rolling base that has adjustments for height. The ballast will be in a separate box in the bottom. I will leave room for a PC in the box to be added later.

This the side of the stand.

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The LCD will be a 17" for starters I was going to use a 19" but the use of a condenser lens removes any advantage of using a larger panel. (There is the problem of overpowering the color filters by having too much light and a larger panel will have less lumen per inch so the color may not wash out as much.) I don't have one yet but if I can’t get a deal for a LCD with a .265 dot pitch on eBay I will just pick one up from new egg for $159.00 they are always fast

This should be the brightest PJ so far and it will use a lot of watts so I think it's OK to call it the MEGAWATT.


I'm not doing any thing fancy with the box it will just be sanded and painted. The wiring will be even simpler than most PJ I just don't see the need for a lot of extra parts for the way this one will be used.

I do have a fairly complete work shop with all the tools necessary for fabrication of wood and metal.

What happened to the elliptical????

I will list all the part and the part numbers and contact numbers so it will be easy for any one to find them, in the first post as time goes on.

The condensers lens are from 6" elliptical spotlights they are all made to take high heat I have two different fl, the thin ones have a fl of 16" and the thick ones are 6"x9"

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The 6' x 400mm fl lens came from an Altman spotlight they call them the 6 x 16 lenes and that is the third shortest lens they make so we now know the fl of that lens. They make a 6 x 12 which will have a shorter fl lens and a 4.5 x 6 . I may not be able to use the 400mm fl condensers but they will work great for the longer arc lamps.


The ballast is a HPS S106 600 watt . I will be using two ballast hooked together in parallel.( I now have both) I have already tested this and it worked fine. I may set the final power level at around 1400 watt depending on the color temp of the MHI lamp. If I need more power I may use the HQI 2000 watt.

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The OSRAM HIT 1200 W/D7/60 is a 6000k lamp made to run at 100v and must have forced air cooling so there will be a coling system for the lamps.

A closer look at the HTI lamps.

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and next to the MHI 1200

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How many lamps?

Wow nice project.

How many cars are you going to fit in your backyard?

Very interesting ineed.

Wow that was fast. I have a nice 1200 watt lamp made just for an elliptical and I does work.

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I have RV parking I think two cars will fit but all you need is one

I made a realy bad drawing of the PJ

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are you going to consider the 740N for the lcd? you can get them on ebay usually for <200.....and as one of the only ones tested at 8.5% with a 1200 watt lamp it should be pretty bright! can't wait to see your results! good luck...
Is there a reason you picked the colortran reflector over the altman 8" reflector? where did you get it?

I don't have a favorite LCD yet.

I wanted the reflector to have a longer fl and the Altman listed the same reflector for the 6" and the 8" Fresnel spotlights. The Colortran stuff is always better built and I think I got a little more than I wanted The reflector is thick and large the one for a 6" might have been fine I may look to see how much the colortran 6" list for. The 8" was $38.00 + shipping so its not cheep. I got it from Colortran.

The reflector looks like it will work with even the big 1000 watt lamps but I just sold mine so it's gone and I can't test the fit. I have a norpro to compare with and I still need to find the fl for the Colortran. For all the ED28 lamps the 8" or maybe even the 6" should work. One thing about the longer fl and large size is it will make for a lot less heat going through the lamp arc, this will let you drive the lamp harder.

Its about freakin time you started this plog, A/V. This will be a interesting read from here on. Best of luck my friend.

shades on... do your best !

... great to see you starting your project AV !


regarding screendoor... i'll post some calc's I did...

15" LCD ==> 1024 pixels / 12.0" viewable width = 85.3 pixels/inch
17" LCD ==> 1280 pixels / 13.3" viewbale width = 96.2 pixels/inch
19" LCD ==> 1280 pixels / 14.8" viewable width = 86.5 pixels/inch
WUXGA ==> 1920 pixels / 13.0" viewable width = 147.2 pixles/inch

as you can see, the 19" LCD would have about the same screendoor as a 15" LCD... going to 17" makes a noticable difference on a 140" (4:3) screen... going to WUXGA, well, it puts the others to shame... much "smoother" and "filmlike" is the best description I can think of...

another way to compensate for screen door is to NOT remove the a/g on the LCD... I haven't yet, but am going to test two triplets (18" bessler & LL Pro) using a WUXGA panel with the ag intact. From my stripping tests I found that most of the on screen lumen gains were from the simple fact that more light made it into the triplet after ag removal. in your case of a small arc and a large triplet, you may not need to remove the ag layer... you'll easily be able to tell once you get up and running by how much light spillage you have around the triplet. ag does have the benefit of reducing the screen door effect, i think by the simple effect of "blurring" the boundaries between pixles...

again, great to see you getting underway with your build !

gs

yeah, its the samsung 740N, the same as Supras.... assuming the 740N will have the same trans as supras(as far as I know its the only pj with one thats been measured), it would be a 70%(!!!) increase in lumens from my 5% trans lcd... I'm strongly thinking about it as a bday present for myself ......
I guess I'm confused why the FL of the reflector would make a difference in the heat at the arc...don't the sphericals all focus on the arc anyway? (assuming you put the lamp at the focus) and I would think a bigger reflector would gather more light(and heat) than a smaller one?

Thanks Sim, for some reason the idea of actually making a PJ sounded like fun.

GS I was doing what everyone does on the weekends at the local electronics store, looking at LCD screens with a high powered magnifying glass to see the screen door and pixel patterns on the LCD's.

After telling many many sales people that I didn't need any help (where are they when you need them I really was JUST LOOKING) I could see some had the pixels arranged differently but all looked to have the same size cells or masking. I didn’t see any finer patterns on the 19" or 21" LCD's.

A macro shot of a 15" 17" and 19" and a wuxga would be nice.

Mikyd1954 It might be a good idea to get a known bright LCD. There is a few that are just brighter than the rest but then I have been looking at the power usage and some take more power too( brighter backlight). If they have a low power usage and are bright then they might be more transmissive or they may have a special lamp.

well, I know NEC has some bright ones, but I've also seen some articles talking about using dula CCFLs for the back light....I know when we started the lcd trans. thread, we thought maybe (to take the samsungs for an example) that a low wattage-around 34 watts is the lowest- and high brightness(450 for a 15", 300 for a 17") might mean something, but using the 740 samsung line, the 740B was tested at (I think) aroiund 4% and the 740N at 8.5% , yet both are identical in specs-power usage, brightness, response time, everything, the only difference was that the 740B has a DVI input, the 740N a VGA input... so its a crapshoot

nice



This is some info (about half way down the page) on the different methods of arranging sub-pixels... of course stripping is easiest and cheapest, therefore, this is what we have (mostly)....




... good idea, just don't think I can get that resolution without some sort of magnification lens... perhaps one of the condenser lenses would be sufficent... or I could just do a screen shot showing them... i'll see what I can do...

I have played around with a few short fl lenses to try to get a closer shot and you can take a picture right through a 10x loupe or a 4" fl condenser. Some of the shots I have done of the lamp arc and such were done that way. The main problem is holding the camera still it soon becomes imposable to not shake at high mag factors.

So now I can bring my tripod and my camera and my 10x loupe to Frys. Is that some kind of crime? I'm starting to make taking lux readings at the movie theater look normal maybe I should just make a paper dragen and click the buy it now butten on the LCD

Ever seen one of these? It's pretty cool. http://www.theproscope.com/ Maybe ebay?

A/V

Screen Door? I've heard the term a couple of times, but I didn't pay much attention to it. What is the screen door? I thought it was the seam where the black-out cloth was sown together.

If you wouldn't mind, please briefly explain what the screen door is. Now my wife is really going to give me a strange look, once she sees me looking at my 17" LCD Viewsonic screen with a magnifying glass. LOL

Thanks,

Fulcrum

screen door is the dark mask seprating the pixel groups, if you get close to screen you will see it..

unless of course you are looking thru a real screendoor

That black mask seperator hides the transistor array that drives the pixels,, if one seperates the glass plates one side has the colour pixels and mask, the other side is a criss cross of conductor lines (horz & vert) and the TFT transistor gates lives each intersection...
TFT stands for thin film transistor

Looks top heavy and a little tipsy - hope you put the ballast(s) in the very bottom near the wheels.
I thought about doing the outdoor drive-in with my pj, but quickly changed my mind when I realized that that much light would be a moth magnet of epic proportions!

Holy crap man.. this thing is going to be a BEAST! Shooting for an IMAX screen or what?

You say this is going to be projected in your backyard drive-in style.. is it going to be projected on the side of your house?

It will look top heavy but the top will be fairly light with the sides of the box made from 5/8 plywood and the top and bottom made from 1/4" hard board.
In the end there will be two 17lb ballast in the bottom box acting as well,
Ballast. The bottom box will have some MDF too. ( 40lb bottom 20lb top)

Right now the bottom box will be 10" h x 18w x 20"L ( yes the top is amost 45"). I was going to make the wheeles flush but I changed my plan and they will stick out with an adjuster to make the pj level.

I don't know how large to make the screen it will be as large as think it will look good. ( should be around 150") I will have to make a screen because the side of my house is brick and there is a tree in the way on that side any how.

about the bugs you might want to try one of these.

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They really work but you must know the direction of the wind. It's a black flag fogger. Soon it will be 118deg and there will be no bugs or any other living things.

Some small progress. This is a better idea of what the PJ will look like. To keep the wiring simple the only thing that will go in the bottom box is tha ballast.

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The lamp mount is done after I found some #3 machine screws. The cool thing here is the lamp ends can be fliped to let me mount the 2" longer MHI1200 lamp. It just happend to fit. I can then change between the HTI and MHI lamps with out the focus point moving.

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I started on the light box. It is going to be made of 1/8" aluminum. I grabbed a 4' x 4' sheet at the great scrap yard a week ago for $7.00. The size is 10.5” wide x 10’ tall x 7” deep.

The box will be made of three parts the main box will have the 6" condenser lens mounted flush. The bottom is a separate piece and the top and back will be one piece and will have the 120mm fan and a exhaust duct to vent the hot air to the outside of the PJ.

The fan and the exist duct will be removable so I can adjust the lamp and reflector.
The lamp will move to adjust to the condenser so the condenser doesn’t have to move. The reflector will move with the lamp.

I don't have a metal break and just bent the aluminum by clamping it between two pieces of metal and bending it. It is not to precision but turned out fairly square.

A few pictures.

This peice will be the two sides and the front.

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And two bends later. I will cut the extra tabs off. The flange give a good place for the rivtes.

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I don’t think I will get much done next week because I need to do some work at my sisters house but my LCD will be here and I have to take a look at that.

The light box and 1200 watt lamp is the more interesting part of this build so I will show a fair amount of detail. The box is just a box. The cooling system will have a filter but that is all that is special.

Ahh, working with what you have - how I loath these days. I used to be able to just waltz into wood/metal shop at school and ask my teacher if I could work on something else today... naturally I'd end up working on it all semester and he'd grade me on it. We had everything in there - must have been 100k$ worth of stuff in there, not to mention that sweet laser cutter that I never got to use.


I'm no expert, but aren't you supposed to punch holes where the corners are? So the aluminum has room to be folded and doesn't fold or bend on top itself (not much of that happening to you though).

Looking cool though - this thing is massive. Adequetly titled.

Reminds me of the ol' salt and pepper shakers ride at the carnivals. I remember when the mechanic left them up there while replacing a part. Lets just say he lived. What color are you going to paint that bad boy?

Nice to see you are finally getting your build going. Looks good so far.

So you went with using the two ballasts in series and a high wattage bulb. Do you still recommend me to try out the 750 watt lamp or should I go for something more powerful. I havn't been following the discussions for about 3 months and you were one of the higher watt bulb guru's

I'm planning on getting my build started and fnished this summer

I will put paint on it. The big question is do I let my 5 year old help? Right now he wants to make everything purple! It's just for outside mainly so there is no WAF. It will have wheels so If it is raining I just might have to bring it inside to wach.

I have all the stuff to do a nice job like a spray gun and air compressor DA sanders and such but the kids like paint brushes.

I am thinking of using the router to make a Megawatt logo on the side with blue plexie behind it and back light it. Stray light won't be a problem out side with no walls to reflect light off of.

Awesome dude, great that you got all the testing out of the way first. I can't wait to see what you get for lumens. You should be atleast double to triple with everything that is better. Arc length, reflector, condensor etc. Good luck.

Bye the way, Megawatt or Bliss? hee hee

Nice work so far a/v. Working with metal (bending) can be a real PITA without a metal break... i'm actually considering just to cut mine (with jigsaw) from steel (or Al) plate, and fasten the edges using aluminum angle... drill & screw togther. You've done a good job without one. I'm trying to get my new HQI "lightbox" able to withstand the blast if the bulb decides to explode ... ... or at least explosion "resistant". I have a high temp thermocouple lying around, I will need to dust it off and use it to monitor the outter glass temp to dial in the lamp cooling... I don't think it will be any big deal though... looking forward to see what you come up with yourself.

cheers,
gs

I would ship you some old steel rule die tools for bending if they wernt so damn heavy!
(like 80lbs each, and then 20 lbs of arbors for different bends!)
Looks like your doing a great job without bending tools anyway

Great to see the megawatt coming together nicely !

All I have used so far is the jig saw for the whole project so far. The hass had to be cut by hand and I just used the jig saw for the metal. It is less messy that the table saw. I was going to use rivets but the 1/8" thick was way strong after the bends and I still have to attach the bottom. The only thing the box has to do is hold the lamp and direct the air flow. I have a friend in the metal business but I just don't need his help.

I plan on making the whole build process simple so any one can copy it. A good jig saw can do a whole lot and then there is only a few panels that you could have home depot rip for you.

I now have a LCD from e-bay he said it was dark but lied as usual. The contrast is stuck on full so the controller board is bad. I took it apart and looked at everything but put it back to gather maybe for sale again on e-bay.

It's hard to tell from the pictures but the contrast is shot.

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It is an Acer AL1714B I have $52.00 in it so far.

I could use a little help here. I could buy a cracked screen acer for about $40.00 which should have a good board or I could buy a good acer for around $70.00 and this would give me two good LCD to use and strip.

Or I could resell it on eBay and just buy this one from new egg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16824005073

The 1400 to 1 contrast looks good it is $200.00 but I will have $80.00 to $120.00 for the "cheep" acer.

The acer is a 16ms panel with a .265 dot pitch. 350 contrast.

My wife told me to get the new panel so it might actually work unlike the e-bay thing with so many people that describe there items correctly.


What would you do?

If money wasn't an object I'd go for the new panel. I've heard (and possibly experienced for myself) that new panels are easier when it comes to removing the antiglare.

Rolling the dice again I won a NEC LCD72V LCD 17" on e-bay for nice and cheep. The screen has a blem in the corner but it's not too bad. It is a 16ms panel so there is a slight chance that the panel itself is exactly the same as the 17" acer. I might get lucky, if not the NEC should be usable if UPS does nor destroy it.

I wanted to start out with a cheep LCD to do the antiglare striping and mounting practice on a low cost panel. A quick picture.

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If any one has a controler for a 16ms 17" panel please let me know I might buy it or at least try it if it look like they are the same panel.

I hope the controller works for you,
those look like a mass of black crystals in the corner(cracked LCD)

If your super gental, the fracture might not travel (if it even is a crack)
Good mounting practice no matter what though, like you said
Good luck!

well, you know... if you display 16:9 (pretty much any movei these days) that probably won't even show I know the controller depends on whether its ttl or lvds(of which there are 1 channel(lder) and 2 channel).... you might get lucky..you deserve to atg some point I'm looking at a new lcd myself...discovered my panel is about 4% transmissive, I'm just going to go for the 740n I think..but I keep seaching ebay for a nice broken lcd(you know the feeling)...right offhand though I'd agree with your wife.....

I just want to see how a .265 dot pitch looks like. If there is too much screen door then I may look at a wuxga panel It will fit fine but why spend the cash if I don’t have too?

I’m thinking that there are only 4 or 5 LCD makers and they sell bare panels to OEM makers who add the polarizer and controller to them or order the panels with them. If the panel is 16ms there should only be so many types of them.

What would a bare OEM panel look like? would the edge connectors be pre attached? If this is true then any controller that is made for that type of panel should work. I might be able to get rid of that ACER logo during startup.

If any one knows a lot about LCD and the controllers and connectors feel free to add your thoughts.

I think Kontron makes all kinds of controllers and cables to connect them..
http://www.kontron-emea.com/index.php?id=82&cat=21

Mikyd: I was looking at the link from Kontron

I don't know a lot about the LCD connectors and was wondering what the two internal connectors on this controller board are for? Can they run a wuxga panel? And they don’t list a price so if you have to ask how much then well you know. The card I was looking at is the dFLAT-AGP-1-M6


What is a JILI40 conector?
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Kontron does make a cool car computer with a nice screen lots of bucks though.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mobile-Computer-System...emZ300001613146

It looks like a PJ waiting to happen. Too rich for me.

I bought a LCD from newegg today It is the 1700 contrast LG listed here.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16824005073

LG L1752TX Black 17" 8ms LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 1400:1 0.264mm Pixel Pitch

A quick picture

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Im going with the LG for now

Does any one know if the LG can strip?

What harm could I do just talking a little peek inside to check for FFC problems?

The LG strips fine and only has ffc on the bottom

I didn't know that they made an LVDS contoller in the form of a PC card . I presume you still need to use a video card like the SGI propriatary LVDS card did. Anyone know the price?

DJ

The Jil connector is the LVDS interface

I have a couple of links somewhere I'm trying to find with the cables you'd need..... the whole lvds/casble/lcd thing can get very confusing, the car people mostly just mess around with small vga/svga screens and mini-itx motherboards with lvds connectors already on them...

What is the conecter on a wuxga panel? So the JILI conecter is for car panels?

Do they make wuxga car panels?

has nothiing to do with cars at all, this is all just standard LCD panel stuff, most lcds of any size are lvds these days, there are ttl but they are in the minority, its the controller to lcd panel cable that needs to be made by each individual controller maker, I believe though that lvds connectors on the lcds themselves are fairly standardized though..I know there are 20 and 30 pin ones but I could be wrong, its very hard to find info on individual panels and connectors .....

AZ

Really great to see you have started this plog! This will be an interesting build.

For LCD's I now have 3

The acer with a bad logic board
The new LG
A NEC with a cracked LCD( now junked.

Hey arizona!

You should open up the 1400:1 LG and see if the f-engine chip modifies the image or the backlight to improve contrast. If it just modifies the brightness of the backlight then we wouldn't get 1400:1 in our DIY projectors.