$10 projector (woo!)
- February 18th, 2011
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One of my favorite tags at Penn State Salvage begins with “parts.”
In this case, it was a projector. A “parts” projector.
Someone really didn’t like this projector. Or dropped it off the ceiling it was mounted on. Or…. something…
In my experience projectors are pretty well built. PSU Salvage has a pretty strict policy about not taking things apart without buying them first, so I took a bit of a gamble. If the bulb was broken, it probably wouldn’t work at all and I’d be able to salvage some DC motors and some nice optics. If it wasn’t, there was a decent chance it could be fixed.
So here it is. In the condition that I found it in. The first thing I always check is the safety switch for the lamp housing. These are put in so that if you have the housing open the power WILL NOT TURN ON. Often, they’re actually physical switches that cut off the mains power. They do this for a very good reason – the lamp is extremely hot, extremely high voltage, and extremely do-not-mess-with-it-please-and-thanks. Nothing wrong with this switch, as far as I could tell. When plugged in, the projector blinked a red “on/standby” light. I looked up a manual for another Sharp branded projector (couldn’t find the one for this). Under troubleshooting, it says the red light blinks if the fan or lens housing isn’t on. If neither of those fixes it, send it in for repair. Clearly, the lamp housing is missing. Time to open it up….
Upon closer inspection, I found the switch that tells the projector that the lens housing is open.
Looks like the problem. At this point, I figured I could glue it toggled to the left (where it would be pushed by the lens mounting), but I didn’t feel like waiting for superglue to dry, and needed an easy-to-test solution. Looking around my desk, I found one of my remaining rapid-prototyped fingers.
Yesssssssss.
Using a multimeter, I confirmed that the switch was now tripped. I put the cover back on, and it works! As it turns out, it’s 4000 lumens and 1024×768 native pixels. It’s pretty heavy at 24 pounds, but it’s a decent projector otherwise. Sure is purty.
