lamp house advice

[John Eickhof]

another note...in the beginning ORC marketed their xenon bulbs with a part number of 1000w, 1600w 2500w etc, but in actuality, they were 700w, 1000w and 2000w bulbs! When Osram started producing bulbs they were numbered after actual wattage, ie: xbo700w/hs xbo1000w/hs etc. ORC revised their bulb numbering to match, my original sales catalogs and original bulb specs show specified current ratings and voltage ratings the verify that, thus, the cinex-35 was rated at 35-37a @ 20-21v the M1000 was rated the same thus putting out 700 watts. the x1600 was rated to run 42a @ 24vor 1008 watts and so forth! interesting enough, if you ever ran the early ones like i did for years, you would probably find the orc bulbs way out lasted the Osrams! and yes, the x1600 , x2500C, and the x6000 had simple brute force power supplies (transformers were made by LP Associates ) and were very reliable. the technical Academy Award was for the aspheric reflector design that out produced early vertical xenons of the same wattage like Gordon said.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

No you are wrong the M100 was called that as it easily produced the same light output as a 1000watt vertical lamphouse did but at 700 watts as did the M1600 did with a 1000wat lamp compared to a vertical 1600
the nameplate clearly has always state its output current. In original installations it was never a issue as the engineer's specifying them understood the design of them and what they were rated for the problem came with second hand installations by those with inadequate knowledge of the product putting them into environments they were not designed for with lamps they were not designed for and frankly they couldnt even read the rating nameplate on the unit . ORC made well engineered products but one had to install them properly within there guidlines

Well all of the theatres I used to service with ORC equipment had far higher failure rates that all of the rest of my kit combined, and that was with properly spec'd lamps. Their platters were also cranky (not as bad as Potts or early Strongs though.) So we will have to agree to disagree on how "well engineered" ORC really was.

And also, they didn't quite make the matching light output that they claimed. I was able to do a side by side test in a screening room, when one of the ORC M1600s shit the bed. I left the other good one on machine 1 , replaced the bad one with a Super Lumex and switcher. Once the Super was aligned, I also aligned the ORC (it had a lamp with around 150hrs in it) and the light meter didn't lie. The ORC was 2-3 fl short compared to the Super, running a 1k lamp. It also had bad color output. Replacing that with the second Super, I got both projectors to a nice flat field, (which again the ORC couldn't manage) with 16fl flat and and over 18fl in scope. (At the same current, around 900w equivalent). And the bonus was the switchers drew LESS AC line current, so they saved on power and lamp life, by not having to push the 1k lamps like they used to do with the same 1ks in the ORC.

[Gordon McLeod]

Tony the comparison regarding light output was a M1000 with a 700 watt lamp produced the same amount of light as a vertical 1000w lamphouse
As for their platters the mid generation was very stable probably the least issues in all our platters we had (strong being the worst)

[John Eickhof]

Tony... you are comparing apples to oranges... (the only M model was the M-1000 w/ integrated supply) the X-1600 and X-2500C used the same reflector as the M-1000, it was an aspheric elliptical 8" diameter with a beam spreader ( negative lens ) element in the optical train, the super lume-x has a 11 inch elliptical reflector with no beam spreader or other lens in the optical system thus the super would obviously put out more light. however, I would compare the ORC light output more to that of the original yellow lume-x they had similar optics, it had a 9 inch reflector with a beam spreader element in the optical system, these early lamp designs soon went away. speaking of lost light... i had some screening rooms with christie CH-20s that would barely hit min luminance w/ 2kw lamps! they too were of early horizontal design and had a negative lens element in the potical system, in fact LP Assoc early lamps did too. eventually all mfrs eliminated the negative (beam spreader) lens with better deeper reflector designs and light output soared.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Ya don't need the beam spreader if you are using the M-1000 on 16mm projectors. It will easily cover that aperature.

[John Eickhof]

thats true mark, if you read my first post i explained how the original Cine-X35 (same opt system as M-1000 ) was originally designed and tested on 16mm with a clear lens and dichroic coating to reduce heat, not a beam spreader, it was also tested in theatre by Ron Offerman when he was an RCA engineer in Des Moines, IA, it gave satisfactory light, so Ron and others let ORC know, the designed the lens element to increase the spot size to a 35mm aperture. later the X-1600 and X-2500 had a longer housing allowing a longer working distance the removal of the lens and simply had a two piece dichroic glass in the front of the lamp.