LCD Projector maintenance

We have 40+ ceiling mounted LCD projectors installed at my school, most of them were fitted in the last 2-3 years as part of an Education Action Zone initiative. Apart from increasing numbers of lamps reaching their end of life counters (why don't teachers switch them off when they are not in use?) we are beginning to see image quality deterioration on some (especially Infocus) and have replaced 3 projectors already as they were beyond economic repair.

Rather than carry on in an ad-hoc fashion, I am trying to establish what is a reasonable strategy for repair, cleaning, and replacement for this equipment so that I can ensure that senior management provide sufficient ring-fenced funds for this and avoid wiping out my 'normal' ICT budget.

Has anyone got any ideas or recommendations for this?

Brian

Only to make sure you get those filters cleaned regularly and try to educate the staff on how much the bulbs actually cost and leaving them on at dinner should be punishable by a firing squad :wink:

Recommend 'no-show' for periods of inactivity rather than on-off, on-off all the time. Clean filters once a month, and get yourself or another member of tech support (if any) to go on official training to learn how to clean them inside.

You should really be getting about 5 years out of a projector providing you look after it.

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tech support (if any) to go on official training to learn how to clean them inside

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Can you recommend anywhere?

I'm afraid I can't, I only heard about it and it was something we might be looking into some time this year. If I hear anything else I'll let you know.

Having just started my latest round of projector cleaning the thought struck me that they all seem to have lots of other fan/grill openings that don't have filters on so the old one about filters being blocked and them sucking in nufiltered dust seems to be mute as I reckon they must do that anyway.

We have several NEC projectors that have ghosting/shadowing on the image and it's not the vga connections as I've tried a laptop plugged straight in the back. I don't believe it to be from the ingress of unfiltered dust as it's not a burnt on the image type of effect.

Anyone else had similar?

Ben

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leaving them on at dinner should be punishable by a firing squad

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Well, I suggest that they are left on (If planning on using them after lunch)

In my previous life using large and very expensive thermionic devices (valves to you young uns) it was instilled into us that leaving one on for an extra hour reduced its life by approximately 1 hour :) whereas switching it off and on again can reduce the life by an unknown amount (ranging from not much to quite a lot due to thermal shock).

You never really know whether one method is better than the other but at least one is a know quantity.

YMMV

regards

Simon