Fixing a DLP rear projection TV.
A few years ago, my uncle had a big screen TV that was starting to go bad. The color wheel was misbehaving, resulting in distorted colors, and sometimes an unstable image. He had an estimate for repairs, and since Sharp doesn’t sell just the color wheel, the whole projection assembly would have to be replaced, from something like $1400. Definitely not worth it, so my uncle got a new TV and gave me the old one. I used it as it was for a short while, but it slowly got worse, and I grew tired of dealing with it.
I decided to take it apart and have a look, to see if I could replace just the color wheel if I could find a source for one (same model TV on Ebay, broken, but with a different issue). I took the back off, pulled out the light engine (the projection assembly) and opened the chamber containing the color wheel. I didn’t feel any problems with the spindle; there was no sticking at all. I saw that there was a thin whitish film on the color wheel, so I took the wheel out and cleaned it with Windex (probably not the best idea, but it hasn’t been a problem so far). I then noticed that the outside of the motor had the same film on it. The outside of the motor case what shiny reflective silver, and it had a black sticker on it, and there is an optical sensor to make sure the wheel is spinning at the correct speed (10800 rpm I think). I figured that the film came from the chamber getting too hot, and when it got hot after a couple of hours of use, the optical sensor would misread the speed and the TV would try to compensate, resulting in all the problems I was having. I cleaned off the motor housing with Windex and put it back together, and it worked.
I still wanted to get a spare color wheel, just in case, so I contacted a seller on Ebay who agreed to send me just the color wheel. I had offered to make him a guide to take it out of the TV, and he said he would want that. So I took the TV apart again, but this time I took lots of pictures. Once I had it apart, I thought why not make a guide on how to fix the TV like I fixed mine, so others with the same problem can fix it themselves. I documented the whole process, and wrote it up on Instructables. Before this guide, I couldn’t find any info on repairing this TV, only others with the same problem. I’ve gotten comments from a few people saying they were able to fix their TV with my guide. The Instructable is here: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-fix-your-Sharp-56DR650-with-color-wheel-iss/
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