I like this comment,

“After a few minutes, I started smelling a burning plastic smell. I turned it off and sniffed it. Apparently the extension cord couldn’t take the heat of the bulb. I turned it back on and let it burn off. After a little while the smell stopped and it was all good. I’ll have to open it back up again at some point and replace the cable with something better suited for the heat. But in the mean while whatever was burning stopped and there is no smell anymore and it’s all good.”

Posted at 10:42 am on May 22nd, 2008 by barry99705

Quite interesting… though the key to a good projector bulb is it’s ability to produce a natural white light. Overhead projectors aren’t much on quality and usually just throw uneven dingy yellow shades and a nice big hot spot in the center.

While this is quite interesting in terms of getting an otherwise junk pj back up and running for cheap money, I’d be interesting in seeing a slightly higher quality solution where the bulb has good color accuracy and no hot-spots, even at $40 or $50 a DIY bulb with white levels and even light output would be a fantastic alternative to the $400-$600 replacement bulb.

Posted at 11:56 am on May 22nd, 2008 by twistedsymphony

I’ve done this before, and I’ll tell you the result was disappointing to say the least.

I used a standard 240 volt (UK) spotlight bulb, but the problem is unless the light coming out of the bulb is exactly parallel, it won’t pass all the way through the projector, so since my bulbs “viewing angle” was ~30 degrees I estimate only about a quarter of the light output of the bulb got to the LCD’s, and even less to the screen.

Interestingly, color was off to start with, but a few color profiles soon sorted that (adobe gamma utility etc.), and hotspots aren’t a problem because the projector had a lens that looked like frosted glass, the purpose to evenly spread light across the screen. In fact it wasn’t even possible to get one part of the screen brighter than the rest!

Posted at 1:02 pm on May 22nd, 2008 by Hello1024

I’ll admit the picture color is slightly off, but not to the point where it kills the image. The color is in my opinion slightly warmer which I don’t find to be such a bad thing either.

I chose the FXL-10 bulb because it is an extremely bright and cheap bulb. Though the rated life is low, it’s been running for monthes fine and when it does blow on me, I won’t be heartbroken.

Thanks for looking.

Posted at 2:36 pm on May 22nd, 2008 by Ryan

interesting, but you’re going to lose the true white you get from projector bulbs. oh wait, already been said

Posted at 6:08 pm on May 22nd, 2008 by andrew

Thats a 82v bulb. It looks like you connected it directly to the 120V input. Is this the case? Is this safe?

I have an ancient projector with no bulbs to be found (and really expensive) maybe I’ll consider doing this once the bulb dies.

Posted at 1:39 pm on May 23rd, 2008 by atrain

After a bit of research, you can use a simple rectifier for a ENX (310W bulb) or a bit more stuff to drop the voltage for a FXL bulb. Or, you can just use a 500W household dimmer to drop the voltage.

Note, I found a nice site diypro.us that sells MH bulbs so you rebuild the bulbs without hacking the projectors.

Posted at 1:06 pm on May 25th, 2008 by atrain

will this mod work on other projectors ?? ive a Toshiba TLP410 and bulb asembly is practically the same also what is the bulb mounted into on your photo ?? this sure would save me some money my last bulb was nearly £200

Posted at 10:08 am on May 30th, 2008 by The Eggman

LOL just looked £231 now jesus

Posted at 10:13 am on May 30th, 2008 by The Eggman