I spent last night and about 3 hours today slowly stripping the Viewsonic VX724 and now that I have accomplished it I'm rather impressed. The bad news is that the lcd does use one FFC that is bent to do a 90% angle from one part of the LCD to another. It looks like a fairly standard size that should be easy to extend AND it uses high quality clips that allow you to release the pressure on it to move it around. In addition, there's only enough width for the cables to go in one way. Really slick way of doing the FFC because it makes them very easy to remove the cable to work on the LCD.

There's some other FFC type connectors on the side of the LCD but if I'm not mistaken they're a very common thing. The slim boards that connect to it can be flexed to 90 degrees or even 180 degrees without a problem.

The control board and transformer sits in its own metal housing that looks like it would be suitable for mounting inside or outside of a projector. It connects to the LCD boards via actual cables with decent connectors.

There is some really strong adhesive tape protecting the boards from any movement or damage. That was probably the toughest part of the whole strip (after I figured out how to open the LCD). My recommendation is, if you plan to use it as a projector, consider just making a very thin cut in the tape after the adhesive (it's on metal backing). You can remove it like I did but you have to be REALLY careful.

The LCD itself just lays in a plastic tray and once you pop the cover off, you can lift the LCD out without having to mess with the whole backlight fixture. I wish I'd have figured that out immediately. I spent about an hour carefully unhooking the backlight fixture clips only to figure out it was unneeded.. bleh! The reason for this is the connectors to the LCD sit on the metal frame via magnets. So I didn't catch this until I started trying to remove the backlight.. then I was like.. HUH?!?

I should be getting the rest of the pieces for my PJ soon. Until then, I placed the LCD back in the casing (minus the cold cathode's) and stored it in a very safe place.

I took some pictures during the build process that I'll share later.

Cheers,
WH

Pics still coming?

Well, I'll assume it looks something like mine, which is a ViewSonic VA721 and also has a 90 degree FFC. That being said I was unable to align the FFC extention properly. So instead I bought a dual FFC jumper. 10 seconds later, my PJ was up and running. (Available at www.DIY-Beamer.com)

Go Here & Here in my plog, to see what to do with the FFC.

Click to view attachment

Cheers!

Fulcrum

i love diy-beamer, has the best ffc ext.

nice strip