Since I've acquired my projector, I've been spending a lot of time trying to understand the wiring and the different electronics inside the projector.
I've finally managed to get the motor running, so this is the first time I have my projector working :)

Nice! How great to finally get it running! Good luck projecting your films. I really wish I had space for 35mm too :-)

Very nice! Curious to know what you plan to do for a lamp house?

I have the original lamphouse with a 1KW Xenon lamp, however I don’t have any way to power it on for the moment.
So for the foreseeable future I will be using my 400W slide projector to act as a "lamphouse" to continue testing the projector.

Tomek,

I think many of us here will enjoy continuing to see photos and hear of the details about your refurbishment as it proceeds.
It is always interesting to learn about some of the challenges encountered and subsequent solutions that are devised--such as the use of the slide projector for an interim light source for general testing etc. Nice work!

I totally agree Greg! I have a Kinoton pk60, but with no lamp house. Very interested to see how this proceeds!

Of course I plan to continue to update this thread when I’ll have additional working things to show.

For the moment I have 2 blocking steps.
I need to make the axle hole on my reels a bit bigger as it is too small to put the reels on the projector (the projector’s axles diameter is 1mm too big).
And I have to construct a cable for the sound, the cable between the sound head and the Dolby processor needs to be shielded and have connectors at both ends (fortunately DB9 connectors are pretty standard). I’m just talking about analog sound, even if the sound head and the Dolby processor both support also digital sound, because this needs additional work, I won’t worry about it for now. (In the future I plan to support all sound formats, I even have a DTS reader which is the best sound format for 35mm film). Also another problem is that the Dolby processor doesn’t support outputting stereo, so I need to mix the multichannel line outs to have a simple line level stereo ouput.

I also have to clean all the sprockets and mechanical parts that handle the film. Even for small trailers, I’d like to keep them in good conditions. Because the projector was stored for a few years without special precautions about this before I acquired it, these things are not in perfect condition at the moment.

For the slide projector, I will just find a way to have it at the right height behind the projector during the tests, so nothing fancy. It is probable that it will just be sitting on a pile of various boxes.

Looks really good, I've just acquired the Kinoton FP25d from the theatre that I am a projectionist for. We've not run film for nearly seven years, and even then it was only for the pre-show ads and trailers.

Also using a Westrex tower. All set up at the back of my garage ready to convert to a home cinema.

Having the same issue as you about the lamp - so was going to use my super 8 projector. I acquired the Xenon lamp and lamphouse too, but I don't want to use it as it's too powerful (for both light and power reasons!).

I've had a thought to use a 500w floodlight/security light as the lamp … or LED one. They're only a few £ from Toolstation so may give that a go.

Have you had any more luck with a more permanent lamphouse solution?

Here's a couple of pics from my current setup:

IMG_20190714_115507

IMG_20190714_115243

Steve
Your tower seems to be in a fixed position. Whilst with Classic (later a Cannon) many years ago our tower was on a circular base with castors and it rotated back and forth.
The tower was positioned so that the feed and take-up were in direct line with the Westrex projector's optics.

Yes, originally the tower had the rotating platform for playback on one and makeup/breakdown on the other. I have the rotating board with casters but, Unfortunately, due to space in my garage I couldn't include it in the setup.

Your setup looks great !

I didn't have time to work on my projector since my last post, but I'm still trying to figure out a long term solution for the lamp that would be more convenient than xenon lamps.

I've identified 2 major problems with white LEDs. They don't have a full colour spectrum, which might result in poor colour quality. And the light source is not small if you want a lot of light as high power LEDs are often arrays of multiple smaller LEDs, so you need special lenses to focus the light.
One major advantage of LED technology is that it is on and off instantaneously, so it might be possible to get more light by removing the mechanical shutter and turning on and off the LEDs in sync with the intermittent to have an "electronic" shutter.

Lately I've been leaning towards the same light source they use in consumer home cinema projectors, UHP lamp. It seems like they have a colour temperature and a spectrum that are much better than those of white LEDs. They are not too expensive and have an acceptable lifespan of around 2000 hours. Also I've found out that some of the smaller professional digital projectors made by Barco and NEC use these type of lamps. So it seems it is a good enough light source to cover the DCI P3 colourspace required for those machines. Colour reproduction when projecting 35mm film should be close to xenon.

But before trying to test different light sources, I need to remove the xenon bulb inside my Kinoton lamphouse. I know which type of protective equipment is needed to handle xenon lamps but I need to find a xenon lamp casing so that can I have a place to put it after removing it from the lamphouse.