I was using my oldest Bauer last night and the lamp blew, or so I thought. On inspection it turned out to be the classic age old fault of a worn out lampholder.

By removing the part welded, recently fitted, lamp from the projector, this is what I was met with:





The temperatures these ceramic insulating blocks are subjected to leads eventually to the ceramic becoming very brittle and breaks away as can be seen here.

Always fit the lampholders and lamp pins in the horizontal plane or otherwise this accelerates this process even quicker for the top lamp pin becoming welded to the lampholder connector.

Luckily, I still have a spare Bender & Werth lampholder that I purchased from E.V.E. This machine is now the only projector that I have that still had it's original lampholder, so once changed out this evening, that should hopefully be the end of these problems here for a good few years.

Time to order another one or two spares though, just in case.

Does not look fun. Compressed air to blow it clean? I am not talking about the cans, no power in those.

Sorry Vidar, you've completely lost me,???
Compressed air to blow what clean?

I thought the ceramic lamp holder was brittle and blew all over the machine. My mistake then :-/ I thought you needed to clean out the brittle ceramic pieces

No Vidar. The ceramic I was referring to was just that on the lamp holder itself. Once this becomes brittle and breaks that's it I'm afraid. Time to replace with new. If I don't get around to doing this tonight I will be replacing it in the next couple of days.