InFocus IN72 projector with vertical bands

Do you see these lines on the InFocus splash screen? If not it just sounds like a bad cable...

I saw this same thing on a DLP with a main board failure but I'm not sure if there's anything else that could cause it...

Small world. I'm the friend who borrowed the projector and have been searching the net for any help/idea as to what it could be and found this thread. I feel horrible that my friend lent me his projector for a lan party and this happens. If it is the mainboard are their any places that sell replacement parts besides infocus?

If it is a main board failure you'll want to purchase a new projector. It'll be several hundred dollars. I would send a PM to Sheridan 1952 to get his take on what he thinks would cause this.

Jester805 let me know if your going to send Sheridan 1952 a PM or if you want me to. Thanks TF Ghost for the advice.

Is it something like this? though your post says you have 4 bars.

That picture 2 posts above looks more like a problem with the image processor. Not a good sign.

Jester805, your problem sounds like bad solder points on the connector mating the main board to the optical engine. The fact that the problem changes when the projector is moved would confirm it for me. I've seen it happen on some other Infocus models, the X1 and X2.

It is repairable, but here is the tricky part. This is SMD work, or Surface Mounted Devices. The connections are on the surface and those are very tiny points grouped real close together. You would need a very tiny point on your soldering iron, a very steady hand (and for me, with my bad eyes, a lot of magnification) and use of solder very sparingly. The two real dangers are using too much heat resulting in lifting the pads and using too much solder and bridging one or more points.

What I would do is remove the top cover and while it is running, use a wood dowel to gently flex the main board in the area directly behind the optical engine. If doing that results in changes, then my suspicions are confirmed.

BTW, for what its worth, its very doubtful that your friend did anything to cause this. It's an unhappy coincidence that it manifested while he had it.

Good luck.

I received an non working IN72 from a friend, I thought it might be the 1a fuse problem, so I took it apart but it wasn't. PM if you think you could use some of the parts, willing to let go for not much more than shipping.

My projector, an X10, looked EXACTLY like "anirbana"'s picture.

It started doing this about six months ago or so, but it would only happen once in a while, so I wasn't too concerned about it. The frequency increased to the point that I would experience the issue as often as once every 10 minutes. After reading some of the posts here and at a few other sites, I decided it was time to junk this thing and buy another (non-Infocus) projector.

However, at least so far, it seems I've fixed it.

I am by no means any sort of professional electronics repairman. I cannot, with any degree of certainty, say that what I've done will fix yours. I was at the point of throwing the thing out the window and buying a new one, so I figured that if I took the thing apart and it didn't work at all after I put it back together, I had lost nothing. Proceed with caution, as you're probably voiding your warranty doing this (but, again, in my case, I really didn't care).

And also, remember that my projector is an X10. If yours is a different model, these instructions may or may not pertain to you. Naturally, proceed at your own risk.

I wish I had taken pictures of everything as I had done it to show in this DIY-guide, but I really didn't think I'd accomplish anything by attempting this in the first place!

I started by opening up the projector by removing about 10 screws from the bottom. Two of them aren't so obvious - one was underneath one of the rubber "feet", and the other was near the inputs.

One side of the projector is a black plastic air duct. Three or four screws hold this in place. It had two fine mesh screens on it that act as air filters. Mine weren't too dirty, but I popped them off and vacuumed them clean. This, obviously, would increase cooling air flow - never a bad idea. This *could* have been what fixed mine, but I think what I did in the next paragraph is what really fixed it. I don't think I had an overheating issue, as I've seen this problem on my projector after it was on for only two minutes.

The projector's mainboard is covered by a sizable silver metal cover. It's held in place by about twenty screws, two of them also anchoring down grounding wires to a smaller board that contains the projector's LED status lights. This smaller board connects to the mainboard by a small, ribbon-like cable that goes through the mainboard's metal cover. It's also flanked on either side by two wires that attach to the IR sensors. Remove these two wires and the ribbon by gently pulling them out. After the cover is removed, look in the area of the lamp. I had a thin, white wire near it that went between the mainboard and the lamp or something nearby. This wire was taped out of the way of some sort of spinning wheel (see, I told you I'm no repairman). The tape looked like black electrical tape, but didn't have the "rubberiness" of electrical tape and felt more like cellophane tape. This tape was right on top of an IC labeled "DLP". I removed the tape from the top of the IC and relocated it to a better place (i.e., NOT on the mainboard).

After putting it all back together (and, surprisingly, not having a single screw left over) and hanging it from the ceiling again, it worked without fail for 5.5 hours straight.