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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: industrial accidents
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
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Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-19-2011 11:32 AM
I remember the first time I saw a carbon arc lamphouse in action (at the Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, in 2003 or 2004). It was exactly as you describe apart, thankfully, from the 'grabbed the still white hot positive carbon' bit. However, as soon as he'd opened up the lamphouse immediately after killing the power I took an instinctive few steps back. The other projectionist there giggled: of course, do that with a xenon lamphouse (and without wearing a safety mask), and you risk the bulb blowing up in your face. But of course with a carbon arc lamphouse, assuming you keep your paws off the business ends, there's no risk.
Has there ever been a documented case of a serious injury or fatality caused by an exploding xenon bulb as the result of mishandling it? I've never come across any reference to any. I do wonder if the conversion to digital cinema might increase that risk. From my first day in a projection booth it was drilled into me that xenon bulbs are something you don't mess with or cut corners in handling. But I've got a sort of gut feeling that film projection is an inherently more physically safety conscious profession/enviromnent. There are lots of fast-moving and sharp parts around, you're working in low light, and poor film handling can cause serious economic damage as well as to health (e.g. accidentally scratching a print). In the IT world, the safety is more virtual: for example, the computer equivalent of accidentally putting a deep emulsion scratch down all eight reels of a 70mm print of 2001 might be accidentally rewriting the master boot record of a HDD thinking you were talking to a different drive letter. That's a problem if you need to show the 'film' in an hour's time, but it won't put you in any physical danger. Yet d-cinema projectors have the same high-pressure xenon arc bulbs as film projectors do/did, and I wonder if, going forward, the cinema site staff will be properly trained to know that opening up one of these things is something you really don't want to do if you don't know what's in there. Just thinking aloud...
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