Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Cinemeccanica Zenith 4000 vertical lamphouse

This is topic Cinemeccanica Zenith 4000 vertical lamphouse in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Christopher Woollard (Member # 2455) on 03-04-2015, 09:51 AM:

I am running an old Cinemeccanica Zenith X 4000 vertical lamphouse which is in exceptionally good condition, along with a Victoria 8 35/70mm projector.
Both reflectors are as new and I burn an Osram XBO 1600W/HS lamp at 50 amps. This gives an excellent light, even across the screen with no hint of flicker. The manual for the lamphouse (on the Film-Tech website) indicates that operation without an extract blower is permitted for lamps of 2.5KW and under. To accommodate the small lamp I have machined to heavy cylindrical lamp base extensions out of stainless steel.

The blower motor (driving a large centrifugal extract fan) is reaching the end of its days and is rather noisy. This could easily simply be removed and the lamp operated without forced cooling. As the lamp was not designed for vertical only operation I fear this may lead to overheating despite the manual statement. Does anyone have past experience of doing this on a vertical lamphouse?

An alternative is to fit a smaller axial fan to provide some forced air flow.

Incidentally I do have the spare parts to convert the lamphouse to horizontal operation although as I do not need the extra light keeping the vertical arrangement offers the advantage of extending lamp life.