The days are getting shorter, the night air is getting crisp and your video projectors are feeling dusty!
Autumn is a great time of year to perform some preventative maintenance for your video projector. Since the days are getting shorter, you will be able to watch your movies and play your games much earlier without the interference of the sunlight. You want to make sure your projector is ready and willing to perform its best, and with some basic maintenance you can be assured your projector will turn those cold nights of winter into a well deserved escape.
Whether your projector is DLP,LCD, LCOS or DiLA, you can do a simple cleaning to keep it running tip top. Maintenance is pretty simple if you keep up on it. All you need a vacuum cleaner with a hose or a handheld type. Run the nozzle over the air vents and over the top of the projector(if it is ceiling mounted). Your goal is to remove any build up of surface dust or dust that was pulled into the vents during operation. This won’t clean the fans that are internal but it will remove any pending dust that could be pulled in. If you repeat this every few months, it will almost eliminate any chance for dust to build up to any worrisome amount.
Dust is a main cause of early projector lamp failure and early projector damage. So many high end projectors are damaged by such simple things as dust build up. Dust causes heat to stay in areas that it isn’t welcome. As any projector owner knows, they give off a lot of heat. Whether its a lamp based or LED/Laser based, they give off heat.
Heat is what causes your problems. Your projector is designed to run between a certain temperature range. On average that temp is 140-170F(depending on the model) and the lamp will stay cool enough to last the advertised run time. Many models advertise 2000 hours and up to 10,000 hours on a single projector lamp. In order for you to experience that same life span, you need to ensure your projector is running at its optimal temperature. When you let the dust build up and the heat load increase, the projector lamps run-time can be severely shortened. The projector lamp will still run at 200F or 250F, but the life span will be greatly decreased.
The hotter the projector lamp runs, the shorter it’s lifespan will be. You can almost add up all the days it is designed to run and multiply that by the average temperature to give you a total “degree hour”. Let’s use 150F for the average temperature to properly run a projector lamp. If that lamp is designed to run for 2,000 hours at 150 degrees F, then the lamp has 300,000 degree hours inside of it. Now if we take that 300,000 degree hours and look at it running at 200F. That is only 50degree higher. If the projector lamp runs at 200F, you will only get 1500 hours out of that projector lamp. Losing 500 hours of your use! If we go up to 250F (this is about as high as they can run without overheating), then the run time is only 1200 hours.
I personally wish manufacturers would rate projector lamps in Degree Hours as I think it would save a lot of hassle for people when they experience shorter lamp lives. Keeping the lamp at its properly rated temperature is the best way to ensure you get the expected run time from your replacement projector lamp.
Pureland Supply offers maintenance and cleaning to projector that have not had it done in a while. If your projector lamps are not lasting as long as they used to, contact our highly trained staff for advice. We can determine if you are having purely a projector lamp issue or if your device needs to be cleaned.
This is also a great time to replace your aged projector lamp. As the days get shorter, you will want the projector lamp to run reliably throughout the winter and upcoming holiday season. Keeping your relatives entertained and the kids busy over the dark winter days is much easier when your projector lamp is new.
Call us at 610-444-0590 or visit our website www.Purelandsupply.com today for your projector lamp!
