Reducing heat in trap from Strong Ultra Lume-X lamphouse

[Gary A. Hoselton]

Have light from 2kW lamp in Strong Ultra Lume-X lamphouse impinging on trap in Simplex XL, 35' throw to 14' wide matte white neutral-gain screen. The trap originally ran way hotter than I was comfortable with, so I changed to three-blade shutter and reduced current thru lamp to achieve pleasantly cool trap with a good picture on screen. Now, I'm interested in running 3-D (Dolby comb filter scheme), which requires much more light. Was the Super Lume-X ever fitted with a dichroic glass filter or mirror to remove infrared energy from the light beam? If so, how to find a pair? Or does the metallic concave mirror at the rear do a good enough job of pulling heat out of light beam? I suppose could change to a water-cooled trap, but that adds complexity.

[Don Furr]

Installing a heat shield in the lamphouse and adding a water cooled gate would certainly help.
How many amp are you feeding the 2K?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

If you do install a heat filter keep in mind that it has to be angled slightly and that the heat filter is really more of a reflector than a filter. So the IR and UV light will bounce back at something in the lamp house. If not properly aimed at a heat sink, it will quickly destroy what it is aimed at... be it wiring, switches, etc. Super Lumex's are bad enough for their quickly deteriorating wiring just from UV and IR that goes back and down baking the wiring in that lamp house. Most manufacturers included a square of asbestos or other heat absorbing material to bounce that heat back on to. As far as water cooling an XL goes, I was never very impressed with it's water cooling. It was not very efficient and most X-L's still ran pretty hot even with it added. Can't tell you how many X-L's I have seen with warped pot metal shutter covers and even a few warped main castings. Perhaps get a better projector with more efficient water cooling. Century's were far batter in that regard and so are Kinotons and the DP-70... the latter probably had the best water cooling of any projector made.

[Gordon McLeod]

The supper lumex at 2K should not be excessively heating the trap assembly
You may want to add a squirrel cage blower tthe air intake port on the non operating side Simplex had a optional one that sat on the floor and connected with a hose

[Brad Miller]

Using a Kinoton with a Super Lume X, you may find yourself going through a LOT of intermittent couplers. The Kinoton projector heads can't take hardly any heat.

[Gordon McLeod]

Odd we had a pair of FP 20s in a drivein with X60C on the back at 4K
They were watercooled and had no issues

[Leo Enticknap]

and the DP-70... the latter probably had the best water cooling of any projector made.

Couldn't agree more. The gate backplates on the ones at the Egyptian were cold to the touch, even with a 7kW lamp burning immediately behind them.

[Steve Guttag]

The problem with the DP70 water cooling was that the 35mm plates were the same as the 70mm and the opening to the plate was the same as 70mm which kept the water from the where the heat was in 35mm projection, particularly when the plates were painted black over brass (instead of the original silver)...so it was common for the 1.85 plate, over time, to warp towards the film plane. Most other systems provided a way to get some of the cooling towards the center of their 35mm plates, including the FP75E, Century JJ and even the Simplex 35/70. Honestly, I'd put the FP75E cooling at the top...they always ran cold and the chromed aperture plates tended to reflect heat rather than absorb it...not that chrome didn't have its own issues (reflects light in unintended directions).

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The problem with the DP70 water cooling was that the 35mm plates were the same as the 70mm and the opening to the plate was the same as 70mm which kept the water from the where the heat was in 35mm projection

Never had cooling issues with the DP-70... ever..... Ran up to 6500 watt lamps in them too. But if the silver plating on the DP-70's cooling plate that you ran was worn off from years of cleaning, then the efficiency goes way down. The silver plating is paramount to the cooling efficiency on that projector..

[Steve Guttag]

It's the aperture plates for 1.85 the primarily suffered. There was just nothing to pull the heat off way down at that small aperture. When the aperture plates themselves were silvered...then it would likely have done better than when they were black painted brass.

[John Eickhof]

if its an older yellow / black 'lume-x' or very early grey and black 'lume-x' there should be a dichroic heat filter / beam spreader lens in nthe snout, if not the the olnly way to get decent light is the run it out of optical focus causing excessive heat on the aperture, if its a later 'super lume-x' then it should be fitted with a cold mirror and all should be well, post the strong 'type' number and i can give you more information, you should be running 65-70 amps on a 2k lamp

[Gary A. Hoselton]

1. I have later Super LumeX type 39000-01, gray hammertone body with black ends, 40k hours on them and 350 hours on new Osram lamps, metal cold mirrors, 300cfm air pulled thru each by fans on outside wall, with 628000-1 power supplies, . Our late Bob McRae brought them to me, on one of his trips to Portland. I set them up about ten years ago with distance specified in manual and bore-sighted using Align-A-Tron. I've been running 65A for a good picture with 3-blade shutters.

2. My removable Simplex XL traps have three metal heat absorber plates just before the aperture plate, each plate having successively smaller opening for light beam till reach the aperture plate which has even smaller opening with a lot of brass showing. I see that the light beam spreads over the first heat absorber plate more than 1/8", which looks like only half the light area goes thru a scope aperture with the other half being absorbed by various metal surfaces--wasteful. How to reposition the light beam so almost all of it impinges on the aperture plate opening? That would increase my available light without upping amperage flowing thru the xenon lamp. Maybe move lamphouse closer to aperture? Or, are there downsides to trying to squeeze almost all the light beam thru the scope aperture?

[Dave Macaulay]

There is a spec for the working distance of the lamphouse, that's in the manual as well as how to measure it. The beam will not be correct if the lamphouse is not at the correct distance. The beam is circular, you can focus it (lamp Z axis) for max light in scope but flat might have dim corners.

We rarely used water cooled traps for a Super Lume-X. They were absolutely necessary for the 7kW consoles, and some installs had the WC setup for 4kW Super Lumex setups but I don't know they were absolutely required.
The beam spreader was for 70mm, but you should have the UV-IR filter plate in the snood if you're running 4kW.

[John Eickhof]

the correct working distance is 25 3/4" from rear of center of reflector to film aperture. the 39000-1 does not have a beam spreader in the optical path. I am sure if Bob set them up the wd would be correct, there should be a round snood piece about 3" between rthe front of the lamphouse and the shutter housing of the projector. the factory snood is generally about 4" long and requires trimming down for proper working distance. I would also make sure you have at least 500cfm exhaust at the outlet of the lamphouse.