New digital projector deterioration

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't know what kind of classes you're referring to, because there are so many. IPC classes... Shielding classes... Laser classes... It's by all means light-years away from being "carrier grade", for that it would need to achieve "five-nines" of availability: 99.999%

A cinema projector is obviously targeted at "heavy use", unlike a consumer product. That doesn't mean it doesn't share components that would otherwise be used in a consumer product.

I think the biggest issue of Digital Cinema hardware is the DCI security compliance overhead. Otherwise, we could use "industry standard" equipment that would fit the norm in terms of brightness, color spectrum, etc. It doesn't help that many of those security components are built to intentionally fail. It's like building a nuclear plant with a positive void coefficient, it's bound to go boom sooner or later, it's Murphy's law.

[Leo Enticknap]

As for pumps, very few have outright died and Barco has one change them on "D" Maintenance every 4 "operational" years so that is probably why they haven't failed on us much.

The gotcha is "has one." All but one of the pumps I've replaced after failure have been in projectors that had not received the planned maintenance that they should have done. These aren't our regular service contract customers, but people who call out of the blue saying "Help! Our projector won't work!" One of them had failed because coolant had leaked until the circuit had run dry! That one was fun - several hours of cleaning crystallized coolant deposits from the light engine and chassis. The pumps seem to last for 7-8 years if you run them until they croak, so presumably Barco took the MLTF that their testing established, and set their recommended replacement interval at half that.

[Randy Stankey]

I don't know what kind of classes you're referring to, because there are so many. IPC classes... Shielding classes... Laser classes... It's by all means light-years away from being "carrier grade", for that it would need to achieve "five-nines" of availability: 99.999%

I was referring to IPC class.

It was part of the training I received for IPC-610 certification.
The place where I work, now, does wiring and connectors for aerospace applications. That's a whole different ball of wax.

I was talking about the IPC class and what digital projectors should be classified as because people are saying that equipment is failing in a short time because of bad or poorly designed or spec'ed connectors.

That just sounds like somebody isn't doing something they should be. Either they aren't spec'ing components to the correct class/standard or they aren't paying attention to quality control. In either case, IPC class speaks directly to that issue. Somebody isn't adhering to some standard(s) that they should be.

Like I said, I would like to think that digital projectors are built to Class 3 standards. That's basically a 90-plus % standard.
If this is the case then the equipment isn't being built and inspected the way it should be. That or they aren't using components and circuit design elements that are standard-compliant.

If projectors are built to Class 2 standards they it seems like they just aren't paying attention to they way things should be. Class 2 is essentially a 75% standard. If you can't build to that, you shouldn't be selling digital projectors at all. (IMO)

If a company is having problems with equipment failing because of faulty connectors, so much so that they have to issue service bulletins to that effect, then they REALLY need to get their act together!

That's just not acceptable!

[Marco Giustini]

As many said, Sony are more prone to environmental contamination. You just need to bear that in mind when choosing the equipment, but that is seldom done.
In your case I suspect the cause of what you see is the building renovation itself: projectors may have been run while the building site was still on and have sucked in dusty air - and London's air is nowhere near to be clean, some good HEPA (not Heppa, Mark) filtration would be more than recommended with any projector, with Sony getting the best out of it.

Now, the good news is that a good maintenance routine can and will restore those Sony to the original beauty - does not take too long and I always found it relaxing to sit down and disassemble the light path! This is unless the projectors are sitting in a inaccessible pod where maintenance is virtually impossible.

[Carsten Kurz]

I forgot to mention that Sony sells HEPA type filter frames for the 5xx and 8xx systems and recommends their use in challenging environments. They are not cheap, though. I guess I would first have the systems cleaned, leave the original filters in place, and see if the situation improves after the Sonys seem to have in fact vacuumed the booths during the first year of operation.

We have installed class 6 filters on our own, which improved the situation a lot. We buy them by the sqm and cut them to size, which is dead cheap. So we don't clean these filters any more, as is recommended practice with the original foam filters, but dispose of them once or twice a year. The result was immediately visible.

- Carsten