The closest description of this device I can think of is a light spectrometer. I am not 100% sure if that is what it is called, but that is what I am going to go with. I could not find anything about it online either. This weighs a total of 40 pounds and is made of mostly 1in thick aluminum. What is even nicer is that it has adjustable feet, which makes it perfect for a digital projector.
Digital Projector Project
This is view from the back. this thing is really built well! Even the belt pullies are made of aluminum!
As you can see, there are a lot of really useful knobs and switches on this light spectrometer which can be very useful on later projects. I am probably not going to use this whole top secion on the digital projector project, and from the looks of it, it seems as if should be able to remove this whole top assembly from the main body.
This really is a neat device. In a way, the large scale and quality of the components offer an elegance to the light spectrometer that wouldn't commoonly be found on a recent edition of such a device. I can imagine a light spectrometer of similar accuracy built today in about 1/5 of the volume.
It's fairly interesting how simple this device seems. 2 mirrors, a mirror like medium, and a prism to output the light. Simple in design, but highly complicated in use. There are more adjustments on this device than I would feel comfortable with if I were a researcher.
Once the side lenses and lens collers were removed, the next closest device to the case was an adjustable light aperture.
I called this an aperture based on the fact that there are two sets of blades which are adjustable and limit the amount of light that is input and output from the device. I believe this essentially increases and decreases light diffraction into and out of the device (there are 2 of these adjustable light apertures).
Here's what the final case would look like. I am going to have to make a hole in one side of the case for a lens mount, but for now, I just want to make sure I have a barebone case to work with.
I ended up just keeping the mirrors. If you notice, two of the mirrors are concave. The third is more of a pellicle mirror than a true thin film mirror.
I could not pass up the counter on the front of the light spectrometer. It seemed like the center point of attention of the entire device. I thought, why not reuse this or put something else here?
After finding out the plexi cover was easily removable, I removed the counter and decided to go with something a little more technologically recent....
Yes, a 2x16 character display would work wonders here. If I find one with the right colors, this would be a great location for the information display. It could provide informations such as the device input, level of brightness, level of contrast, and even display battery life (If I decide to include batteries inside the projector).
Here's a picture for size comparison. Lens Vs. light spectrometer case. This is one large lens! It ended up coming from a digital projector, and was salvaged by my brother. Nonetheless, the lens and case look like they belong together.
I decided to temporarily mount the lens on the front of the projector box just to get a rough idea of size and design. It sure looks like one massive digital projector. I like it.
this is the basic empty case. I removed all the metal rods and mirror mounts to make space for the LCD, digital displayboard and cooling system.
There is quite a bit of room inside this case. But besides that, the case is constructed very, very well. If I design this digital projector well enough, I wouldnt be suprised if I could drop this digital projector a few feet without anything breaking. Well, except maybe the lens. Ok, lets just not drop it.
Since this is the front most side of the case, this is where I am going to mount the lens. I will obviously have to make some changes...
