dangerous to let projector lamp burn out? (1 Viewer)

[keir]

I am not sure but it seems from reading the manual that my infocus 4805 projector just shuts the lamp off after 3000 hours whether it is actually burnt out or not. Is this a case of deteriorating image quality over time? or is it dangerous to let a lamp run after 3000 hours of use?

 

[chuckg]

At the end of the life span on those lamps, there is possibility of an explosion. It won't wreck your living room, but does produce a spectacular pop that can have disastrous consequences for the innards of a projector.

We had a lamp in a Liesegang blow out prematureley here at work. There was nothing left of the glass lamp tube but powder. Luckily there was no damage to the projector. I got lucky and got a new lamp on warranty.

 

[Leo Kerr]

The big 'risk' for most home projectors is that lamp-dust and shards might get into some of the mechanical parts: color wheel drive-shaft, fan bearings, and the like.

It's not until you get to xenon arc lamps that you start wondering about explosive containment...

Leo

 

[keir]

thanks guys.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

The lamp in my X-1 blew last week just after passing 3000 hrs (3037 to be exact), with the accompanying spectacular pop that Chuckg mentioned that pretty much scared the pants off my cat (not that he was wearing any) and me.

I was afraid that it caused damage to the projector, but after removing the old lamp housing, I inspected the inside of the lamp cavity and saw nothing out of the ordinary except some dust, not glass dust, just dust, which I removed as best I could with a vacum cleaner set on low and cleaned the rest with some alchohol and Q-tips, I did not go anywhere near the color wheel BTW.

The lamp housing and screens seems to have contained all the fragments inside, the buld tube itself did not disintigrate and turn to dust in my case, it exploded at it's base on the reflector leaving the rest of it intact, including the tip, there is only a small pile of glass inside the housing.

I went to my local high-end HT store this past Thursday and ordered a new lamp ($300.00 :frowning: ), while I was being helped I told the guy what happened and he then told me of a guy who had the lamp in his 4805 explode which almost blew his color wheel clean in two! I already knew that my color wheel was fine because I had inspected it after I removed the old lamp after the explosion, and i'm glad that I did, because if I hadn't seen for myself that my color wheel was okay, that kind of story would have scared the living shit out of me!

I theorize that what happened in that guy's case, is that the nature of his lamp failure caused the glass fragments, probably the tip, to shoot straight foreward like a shotgun blast, crash through the small glass window on the lamp housing that sits directly in front of the color wheel, and as a result his color wheel took a direct hit by the glass while it was still spinning, in effect cutting it. Or that it wasn't the glass from the bulb at all, but rather fragments of the window that was busted out from being hit violently from behind.

My old lamp housing is 100% intact with no signs of exit by any glass, I even ran my finger's over the screens and looked to see if I could see glass dust on my fingers but saw none at all.

The projector is all cleaned up and ready for the new lamp, which is cool because i'm nothing without my HT.