Repairing DLP Colour Wheels

I got an email from ERG Member and his name is Greg and he would like me to share with you about the repairing DLP Colour Wheels. Here is the email:

Jestine,

I want to share with you (and other members) a procedure I have found to
reclaim life of a DLP color wheel. This is particularly noteworthy since many color wheels are not available as a service part, but necessitate replacement of the entire light engine. I use Ronsonol lighter fluid
(naptha) to liberally flush out the color wheel windings and bearing assemblies. Naptha has excellent cleaning properties, is fast drying and leaves behind no dangerous residue, all while having some residual lubricative properties. I discovered this while I was a 35mm camera repair technician back in the 90’s. It works very well for flushing out DC motors that have quit working, provided the brushes and commutator have not worn past their service limits.

I had two Mitsubishi WD-62627 DLP monitors used in Sega House of The Dead 4 simulator games that started going black and white and flashing images on the screen. Suspecting it was the color wheel, I removed the light engines and the color wheels, squirted liberal amounts of lighter fluid in the color wheels and let them soak. I then used compressed air to blow out any remaining lighter fluid, carefully cleaned the glass on the color wheels and re-installed. This was in April of 2008. Both of these games are run 12 hour a day, seven days a week in an amusement establishment and have held up very well. I do not offer this a panacea or permanent fix, but it has worked well for me and might be of use for other techs as well.

Regards,

Greg Balsley
McKinney, Texas USA

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Thanks for sharing Greg!

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4 Comments

1. 

   Waleed

   July 10, 2009 at 4:37 am

   I have heard about the color wheel but I never understood the purpose of it in electronics device. could you please explain or give me a link or some information about it. thanks

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2. 

   admin

   July 10, 2009 at 8:51 pm

   Hi Waleed,

   I have posted the link in my blog.

   Jestine

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3. 

   Waleed

   July 13, 2009 at 7:52 pm

   thanks for posting. I wish there is an article that explains that useage of the color wheel in the plasma tv set

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4. 

   John Preher

   September 3, 2009 at 4:35 am

   Waleed, color wheel is used in 1 DMD chip DLP TV not Plasma TV and also not in DLP that has 3 DMD chips which uses prism to spilt white light into R G B which is sent to each of the 3 DMDs so because of having a redDMD blueDMD and greenDMD there is no need for color wheel in 3DMD DLP. No plasma Tvs use color wheels.

   Thanks for this tutorial Greg. I will be trying your method tomorrow rather than buy the $250 color wheel for one of my customers TVs. First I will try this to hopefully make some extra money and save my customer some money as well.

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