Explosive lamp failure aftermath.

I did up until 3 years ago work as an projectionist and engineer for the local cinema. We used Christie projectors. The bulb explosion I wrote about earlier was an Christie Xenolite 2 CDXL-30SD. It is 3KW and is replaced on 1000 of 1500 stated life to avoid big booms. ;) I have several of them for my own experimentations. But it’s rarely I have the need for 22500 lumen. :)

I work with the big versions of those (cinema projector lamps). Sometimes they just crack and *poof* when the fail, other times its much more explosive. Most impressive I ever saw was a big 3.5kw one. The encapsulation fractured. The explosion itself destroyed the reflector, UV filter, cold mirror and the input side of the integrator rod. The Anode of the lamp(which would have been a white hot lump of tungsten about the size and shape of a bullet) went right through the metal lamphouse module and blew a hole in the exhaust chamber.

GL_1_Code1_1A

Nasty as the lamp looked it's still better than the aftermath from that pepper would be. Yikes.

Michael Thompson

The moving-heads under their weather shields look like the ultimate incarnation of the Big Gay Dalek camping light. You just need to spray-paint all the bases hot pink, set a nice magenta tone, maybe a bit of gobo action for some flair.

Chris Talbot

I've never been present when a lamp failed catastrophically, but I've occasionally had to autopsy the remains and break the bad news to the client. One example: Peter Wier (the well-regarded Australian director) used to have a house up at Palm Beach (about an hour north of Sydney) with a very impressive 7.2 channel Meridian home cinema. It featured an extremely expensive Barco DLP projector (the only one of its type in the country at the time) which REALLY did not like the continuous exposure to the salt-laden coastal air. We tried all sorts of things to stop the continuous corrosion/oxidation of components and prevent salt residue precipitating onto the lamp envelope. Nothing did much good. Peter came back from a long period overseas while producing 'Master & Commander', went into the cinema to watch a pre-production cut of the film... KERBANG. The catastrophic failure was most likely due to a hot-spot on the envelope because of that bloody salt crust that kept condensing out of the air. It took out the internal optics and prism, the colour wheel, the DMD board, tiny shards of glass everywhere. Bye-bye expensive Barco projector. :(

Chris Talbot

Eat the pepper

Nirvash

I've had the lamp on a cinema projector explode in that way. Even tho it has safeguards to prevent damage to the internals, it destroyed the internal optical lences. It even bent metal. Oh and it was a really nice boom too. :) First and only one in my years as a projectionist to have something like that happen. I've had them fail and explode, but in a "safe" manner. Christie has serial numbers on everything, even the bulb itself and I had to send the remains back to them for investigation.

love the sound of that door

God 420