Ever wanted to watch movies or play games on a giant screen from the comfort of your own home? How about watching a movie under the stars right in your very back yard? But with projectors costing a small fortune these days have you considered building your own?
Building your own projector isn't a new idea. Disassemble a desktop LCD display, put a really, really bright light behind it and add some optics and voila! you've got a projector. The real question: is it worth it? Obviously you may be a little hesitant to go out and spend hundreds of dollars only to be left with a pile of parts and no result.
Given the cost, why build your own? Replacement lamps for commercial projectors cost around $300 each and only last a few thousand hours at most. The lamp in a DIY projector should last about 10,000 hours and costs only $50 to replace. You can build your own projector for far less than a store bought unit too. The cost can even be brought down lower by scrounging parts or picking them up second hand. Given this information it starts making more sense. Add to the fact you'll be the envy of all your friends not only owning your own projector but being able to say with pride that you built it yourself!
Once you've learnt the theory of light projection and select which type of enclosure you would like to build, the next step is correctly fitting all the components inside. You'll need to correctly disassemble your LCD and mount it together with your fresnel lenses and high intensity discharge lamp,together with your triplet lense to complete the assembly process. Next is calibrating for keystoning and ensuring your light source is properly centered to ensure even light distribution across your LCD to ensure your projected image is uniform. Finally you need to properly test your projector to ensure it doesn't overheat or you risk damaging the sensitive electronics or LCD itself.
If you're hell-bent on doing all the research yourself, there are couple of places to check out. "Lumenlab" recently made access to their forums free. Alternatively, The "DIYaudio forum" users have some interesting ideas too. While these sites do offer great information - there is a wealth of it to sift through - It'll take you a few weeks of reading to get you up to speed.
If all that sounds daunting and instead you want complete step-by-step - take you by the hand - instructions, check out http://www.buildyourownprojector.com These guys have an incredibly detailed eBook which not only explains all the theory needed to build the projector - in simpleton terms - it also gives you complete step by step photos of the entire process and even suggests sources for all the parts needed. These guys have done their research too, suggesting places where you can go to get parts inexpensively to complete your project for a fraction of the price of a commercially bought projector.
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Simon Sorrento
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