Projectors can project unsatisfactory images for a variety of reasons. However, most of the time the lamp is causing an issue. No matter how expensive or advanced a projector is, the lamp always comes with a limited life.
The most advanced and expensive options must have an impressive life span. However, the lamps do expire and require a replacement.
Most projector lamps stay well from 1500 to 2,000 hours. After the said duration, the lamp begins producing an unsatisfactory image and eventually expires.
However that is not always the case, sometimes the lamp goes bad even before the suggested time.
How You Can Test if the Projector Lamp is Bad?
Whenever a projector’s lamp goes bad there would be several visible signs. The spots would begin appearing on the screen, the lamp start dimming, light start flickering, or be physically blown out.
You can test the projector lamp in several ways. One of the easy ways to judge the situation is by “examining the image”. Since the issue at hand is to test the lamp, here is how you can test the projector without any special skill or knowledge;
Examine
Before unscrewing the projector to physically check the lamp condition, examine the picture quality in a 100% light-controlled room.
Spots
When the lamp goes bad, the spots would appear on the screen and these spots can easily be noticeable as well.
The spots would be more noticeable on the blue screen. Therefore, turn the screen blue and see if the spots appear on the screen or not.
Dimming
By dimming we mean, the lamp would lose much of its brightness(the image projected would be much darker than it used to be).
Try using a projector in a 100% light-controlled room, if it does not produce an impressive image the projector lamp is bad.
Flickering lamp light
Flickering lamp light is another projector’s way of telling you that the lamp has gone bad.
To notice a flickering lamplight, you do not have to do much. All it takes is undivided attention to get noticed.
If any of the above-mentioned signs came to notice, you can further investigate and get a replacement.
Process to Examine if Projector Lamp is Bad
Physical investigation
The physical investigation is not that hard as well. However, you would need a few tools to get done with the job. For further physical investigation you need;
A multimeter
Do not get hesitant, Multimeter is one forgiving device that even a person with zero knowledge of electronics can use. Now to move ahead to the trickiest part
Unplug the projector’s power cord
Since we are going to examine the lamp physically to play safe, unplug the power cord and let the projector cool down a little if it’s heating. Give it five or ten minutes.
Remove the casing
Upon examining the projector, you would find the casing would be sealed with the screw. Unscrew the screw and gently remove the casing.
Remove the lamp
Once the casing would be removed, the lamp would be exposed. It’s time to remove the lamp from the structure and examine it.
Take a multimeter and examine
Now is the time to put the lamp to test, carefully touch each end of the multimeter onto each terminal. Keep your eye on the analogue meter, the needle should move and register zero.
If the movement of the meter shows that there is continuity on the lamp, the lamp would be fine. However, in the other case, the lamp has gone bad.
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