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Modding an old projector

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nealric

Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2002
Location
under the floorboards
I got the idea that I wanted to experiment with a projector and picked one of these up on ebay for $50 shipped to my door. :D

Powered it on today, and it throws a reasonably good picture with the lights off in the day time, and it seems like it will look great at night.

But the problem is, it sounds like a dustbuster. :(
At the moment, movies would be pretty much unwatchable without using a sound-isolating headphone to block the fan noise. So, being my enterprising self, I cracked open the casing to see what was making the noise:

32263961.jpg


As you can see, there are two small, high-speed fans shoved in there with very little space for air to flow around. Great design :rolleyes:

So, any commentary on the following ideas to make this thing somewhat reasonable:

#1: Trying to find fans of the same size that are quieter. I am afraid this wouldn't quiet things all that much, as they would still need to spin fast to get the necessary airflow.

#2. Putting a potentiometer on the fans. I'm worried this would overheat the bulb- but I find from working on computers that often lowering fan speed 20% drops the perceived noise by 50%. Anybody tried this?

#3: Rip out/unplug the two fans and replace with a constant-on 120mm, or even 140mm fan. This would require mutilating the casing and having a giant fan sticking out the side.

#4: Super ghetto steez: Run it without the casing, unplug the fans, and run a house fan next to it.

#5: Build a sound-deadening box of some sort. I'm afraid that the goals of keeping it from overheating and giving it effective cooling would be somewhat mutually exclusive.

The good news is that the whole setup was just $50, so there is not much to lose from tinkering. For reference, here is a photo of the whole innards:

17a18e6c.jpg


Any help would be much appreciated!

PS: I am having trouble figuring out what the bulb hours are. The bulb part of the menu just has options for "bulb warning" and reset. Do some projectors not have bulb odometers?
 
I would go with #3

#3: Rip out/unplug the two fans and replace with a constant-on 120mm, or even 140mm fan. This would require mutilating the casing and having a giant fan sticking out the side.
 
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