Tutorial on Three Sided and Portable Projector Screen

Glen Weston shares with us his experience on making a three screen projector screen which is also portable. Seems to be an interesting approach.




Glen Weston shares with us the following: I have now posted some pictures in the gallery of my projector screen upgrade that I am currently working on. I will link to them throughout this post.

This three screen system will be completely fold away as the garage where the sim is housed is also used for other things.

I really wanted to make use of all of the garage width & the only way to do that was to make the three sceens either de-mountable or fold away in a relatively quick & easy mannner.

I have chosen 12mm MDF for the screen material. I probably could have gone with a thinner board & made the screens lighter but I was advised that the thicker board would have less chance of warping through natural moisture in the air. I was advised to paint both sides of the board for the same reasons.

The individual MDF sheet size is 2400mm Wide x 1800mm High so the total screen width by the time I will have finnished will be 7200mm Wide.
For the moment I will be going for the Standard 3 Projectors with a single outside view using the Triplehead2go unit.

However the mechanism I am using here for the screen storage can quite easily be adapted to utilise the 5 seperate ouside views with screens at 90 Degrees to each other without too much modification, as you will see.

I first mounted the centre screen & have referenced all levels from that one.
It does very little except hang from an RSJ with some gate hinges & can fold up to the ceiling rafters.

Below is some of the hardware used to Mount the screen, the board weighs in at about 40-50 KG's so it is not an easy thing to manage & a hoist was used to assist in the fitting.

The 2400 x 1800 sheet is the perfect aspect ratio for 4:3 projectors & does not require cutting. These sheets are not found in normal hardware stores you might have to go to a special MDF stockist.



Heavy duty Gate hinges were used as shown here.



I mounted the hinges & temporarily installed two eye bolts so I could sling the sheet up onto the hoist, this made it very easy to manuvere into the correct position.
Once mouted I just Removed the two eye bolts & replaced them with normal countersunk bolts.



I covered the countersunk bolt head with these adhesive bolt head covers.



I then made some slightly bigger sticky paper covers that I stuck on top of those & when painted they are pretty much not even visible, I really didn't want to use any filler in case I need to dismount the screen although that would have given a much better finnish.

Note the hole punch shown here, they are a handy tool to have, they easily punch holes into 3mm MDF. Handy for panel work.



Here is the the result, this is a close up photo, the screen is painted with just undercoat at this point.



Here is the rear view of the centre screen showing the hinge mounted to the RSJ, this screen can now just fold up to the rafters when not in use leaving the garage available for other things, My fighter pit is on castor wheels so it too can be moved when not in use.



In the next post I will show how I constructed the right hand screen that can be rolled to the right side wall of the garage & also folded to the rafters if required.

OK So now comes the interesting bit, I want to run three projectors & use the total width of the garage it needs to all come apart & be able to put it back together within a few minutes........Well this is what I came up with.

I investigated Bi-Folding door rollers down at Bunnings (A local Hardware store) here in Australia. I located the Manufacturer who was local to me & visited their showroom where I could play with their product out of the packet.

The rolling mechanism pivots about a brass bushing with a thread through the middle of it which makes it very easy for height adjsutment.

Here is the roller as purchased off the shelf.



What I wanted to do is not like anything I have seen before & I couldn't find anything on google that would suit the task at hand.

I wanted to be able to slide the right & left side screens flat up to the walls out of the way when not in use but also wanted to have the screens at a 45 degree angle & be able to but them up against the centre screen when in use.

So I started thinking about using two sliding mechanisms, one for pushing the screen to the wall & one for sliding the screen up to the centre screen.

Thinking about the rollers that I played with I realised it could actaully be done just by using a peice of threaded rod...........Where would we be without threaded rod.......So I took the gamble & purchased the roller system comprising of 4 x Roller Trucks, 3 x 2400mm Tracks & 4 x Stops.

Here is a picture of the modified roller trucks using a small piece of threaded rod.



So now we have front/back & left/right movement & I can adjust the height of the screen at the rollers & also square it up to the centre screen, I had basically solved all the problems I was facing in one hit.........

Here is a picture of the track that is mounted onto the RHS screen using a peice of 60mm Aluminium angle, the screen is mounted to this angle using the the same gate hinges as used on the centre screen. You can see the holes are drilled for the hinges at this point.



So then I mounted the second & third rails up onto the side of the rafters, by the way the track comes in two forms of mounting, top mounting as used on the screen itself & side mounting as used on the rafters.

See here........... You can see one truck roller & stop in place in this photo.



And here the fully modified trucks in place



Again two eye bolts in place, some rope & the hoist..........
The RHS screen now on it's rollers & fully moveable in any direction you wish all the way to the stops.



Here it is butted up against the centre screen & squared off nicely, no gap at all between the screens.




Here you can see the level has been adjusted right down to the mm using the threaded rod on the roller trucks, note the lock nut so they can't easily come undone........also the countersunk bolts I used to mount the hinges.



Here is the rear view of the centre & RHS screens, I am just using some tape to keep them butted up against each other for now but I think I will use some sort of elastic strap that I can clip on quickly.



And what I was trying to acheive the most was this as shown, the screen rolled put of the way up against the side wall......And because it is mounted on hinges here I can also fold it to the rafters like the centre screen.



So at this point I have got the Right side done, I now have to go & purchase the materials for the Left hand side, fit it all up & get the paint out again.

Just slightly better than the good ole bed sheet...........

Cheers Glenn.