Thanks for sharing. I was a projectionist at a local theater in my 20s, and I have very fond memories of working with the older machines. There was something so satisfying working them on Summer nights in the booth alone.
The move to digital projectors everywhere was very shortly after I left.
Always cool to see people help keep the medium alive.
PaulHoule•14m ago
Circa 1990 I was on the movie committee of the student council at my undergrad school and had the job of periodically checking out a 16mm projector from the library and lugging it across campus to the student union building where we'd show a movie every Friday. I remember showing Rebel Without a Cause. We had a video projector in the same room though and had found it was cheaper to get a license to show VHS tapes which was a lot easier on the projectionist although it was much worse quality.
M4rkJW•2h ago
Neat stuff! I have a ton of 8mm and some 16mm film to archive, perhaps this is a good first step towards an open-source film scanner.
Animats•36m ago
8mm film scanners are so common they're available at Walmart.
There are lots of DIY film scanners described on Youtube. They don't have to run fast and they don't need a pull-down mechanism, so they're simple devices.
sho_hn•1h ago
Super awesome project. As an embedded engineer who grew up in the arthouse/program cinemas of Berlin, I wish I had heard about this two years ago. Would have loved to help out.
sandworm101•39m ago
Be careful about using AOI cpu coolers for other purposes. They are enclosed units subject to evaporation and air infiltration. Fluid levels will drop over time and refilling is difficult. Also, be wary of orientation. You want to make sure that the inevitable bubbles are not repeatedly drawn into the pump. So you want to position the radiator with the in/our ports lower, giving a low-turbulence chamber towards the top of the radiator for bubbles to accumulate.
Opinions differ, but 800+watts through a 2-fan radiator, in an already hot environment, is likely not enough. If this was an 800-watt CPU I would be going with either some wickedly powerful fans or 2x as much radiator.
the_third_wave•39m ago
One thing seems odd: it takes an 800W LED to double the light output of a 250W halogen bulb. Normally LED is far more efficient than halogen so I wonder why the opposite is true for this project.
Animats•35m ago
The LED lamp system they built looks like it was designed by an overclocker.
sandworm101•29m ago
An 800w LED is not as perfect a point source. They are loosing lots of light that isn't focusable. See how in the comparison picture that there is insane light bleed out the side from the LED projector. The older projector benefits from a hundred years of optimization of how to focus a lightbulb into an image. The LED rig is starting from scratch with a source that isn't meant for focus onto an image.
moonshinefe•2h ago
The move to digital projectors everywhere was very shortly after I left.
Always cool to see people help keep the medium alive.
PaulHoule•14m ago