CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Elaine Benes · Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Posts: 1416

This is a ceiling mount I use for my Marquee, its very easy to make, you can get the parts at any Home Depot, or a contractor supply store.

All you need are 8 eyebolts, sufficient nuts to secure them (ie. two every spot you want to 'set' the eye bolts, and one to back the 'set' position), two lengths of unistrut or barn door channel, and the lag bolts to secure the unistrut to the ceiling joists, and sufficient washers for the whole thing.

When you span three ceiling joists, you are only putting about 30lbs on each lag bolt, way, way, way below their capacity. Make sure you drill holes for the lag bolts as they are weakened by simply driving them into an undrilled joist, and the joist could split.

Attach your unistrut so its basically centered to where your projector needs to be. If your joists run parallel to your screen, then your unistrut will run perpendicular and they need to be centered to the screen center and approximately where you need your projector to be for the screen size.

If your joists run perpendicular to your screen, then the unistrut is placed at the approximate screen center, parallel to the screen, and at the approximate position of your projector. Regardless of which orientation of the unistrut in relation to the screen, make sure they are approximately the same width apart as your projectors feet holes...

When you have your unistrut/barn door channel up, you need two heavy duty washers the same outside size as the inside of your channel. Doubling them up just prevents any deflection. Using washers instead of slider bolts is a better way to go as they will not turn and fall out of the channel. Make sure they are as big as the inside of the channel and fit snugly so they CAN'T be removed from the channel except by sliding them out. I used slide nuts on mine, but if I did it again, I'd use washers like my buddy has, they work better.

Put two nuts onto the eye bolts that will go into the channel on the ceiling, and a washer, put the threaded portion of the eye bolt through the washers that are in the channel, and thread on a nut inside the channel. Tighten the bottom bolts till it is snug enough to be secure, but a tiny bit loose so you can slide it to its position.

Personally, I get all the hangers in their position then tighten everything right down, it makes mounting the pj easier.

Flip your pj over, thread two nuts onto each of four eyebolts then thread them into the foot holes of your projector. NEC's use metric foot holes, so finding the eyebolts with metric thread will be a challenge here in NA, but they are available, I'm sure(edit: apparently the NEC foot holes should not be used for this, sorry to mislead).
Marquee's use standard 3/8" thread, so you can get everything at Home Depot.

When you have the eyebolts in to the desired depth, hoist the projector up, and slide the black pipe through all the holes.

Now you can just shove your projector around to adjust its position fore/aft and left right.

Drop distance can be changed by using longer or shorter eye bolts. I use 4" ones on mine, but my buddy wanted more drop so we used 8" ones on either side. They are commonly available up to 12" length.

Also note, its not necessary to use the same size eye bolts on both sides of the mount. If you need to use 1/2" ones on the ceiling side to get the amount of drop you want, so be it, the black pipe is the actual mounting surface, and since it just sits in the eye bolts, as long as it will fit, it doesn't really matter what size the eye bolts are...

Personally, I find this mount very stable, easy to adjust and cheap/easy to make. My projector is easy to setup when mounted like this and its much, much, much easier to adjust than the variation that uses 4 pieces of unistrut, and threaded rod. Plus, sliding the black pipe through the eye bolts is very quick way to secure it, and quite a bit less finicky than trying to get something hooked or bolted in place.

When I changed from HD-8 RevB lenses to HD144's, I didn't have to remount, just slide it forward a bit, it took all of about five minutes...

mtmelvin · Joined: 18 Mar 2006 Posts: 153 Location: Bay Area, CA

I love this idea. It's simple and flexible. Thanks for sharing this!

paw · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 1176 Location: Arvada, CO

Zebu Fellenz · Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 2567

Very Nice,

I've always liked the Marquee for flexibility in mounting, as Paw mentioned you can't hang a Nec like that, a G70 would also be a bit of a problem as the threaded holes are in funny locations but for the Marquee it works great.

Erik

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

It does look great but we'd have to find away to lock the posistion so it wont move if someone accidentaly hits it. Looks like those eye hooks and pipe can slide easy. maybe extend the thread and have nuts on each side to be able to lock them around the eye bolt?

Athanasios

Elaine Benes · Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Posts: 1416

Trust me, you have no need to "lock" anything in place.

Unless you hit it with a running shoulder tackle, it stays put simply from the weight of the projector...

My buddy whose 8500LC we just hung, whacks his head quite hard on my 8000 with regularity, and it has never moved at all...

Fujifrontier · Joined: 20 Oct 2007 Posts: 354 Location: San Antonio, Texas

Too bad I can't hang my old Stony that way; that does look like an easy way to mount! Smile

the_avguy · Joined: 16 Mar 2007 Posts: 91 Location: Edmonton, Alberta

Does anyone know if this will work for an ECP 4100?
It looks like it should
Are the bolts the same size?
thanks

**kal** · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:31 pm Post subject:

Nice and simple. I like it. I went with the unistrut for both levels like here: http://www.curtpalme.com/MountingMethods.shtm

But you don't really need unistrut for both levels... I like it!

Kal

stefuel · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:48 pm Post subject:

I could never figure why in hell you guy's would spend thousands building your theaters but won't spend a couple of hundred for a factory mount. It just blows my mind. Laughing

Nothing that looks like the shelving in my garage is allowed in the house Mr. Green

the_avguy · Joined: 16 Mar 2007 Posts: 91 Location: Edmonton, Alberta

stefuel · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 10:20 pm Post subject:

I'm sorry but anything but a factory mount just looks cheezie to me.

JustGreg · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 3098 Location: Kenosha, WI

Yeahbutt....factory mounts don't work in all applications. Sometimes a little fabrication is required.

stefuel · Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 10:58 pm Post subject:

**kal** · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 2:10 am Post subject:

the_avguy · Joined: 16 Mar 2007 Posts: 91 Location: Edmonton, Alberta

stefuel · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 10:00 am Post subject:

Kal,
Your "moral of the story" is the most bizzar thing I've ever heard come from you. This is why NEW CRT projectors were never offered to the end user market. If you can read a manual, use a tape-measure and level, you can get it right first time every time. You can still use what you know about raster usage and work that into the calculation for projector to screen depth as most of those additional figures have been posted many times. Thanks for the "ignorant" comment. I guess being able to read and use tools correctly isn't worth a damn when you can just throw up some uni-strut and wiggle it around till it works. Rolling Eyes

**kal** · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:26 pm Post subject:

aspec2 · Joined: 10 Apr 2006 Posts: 549

**kal** · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 7:31 pm Post subject:

Good points Walt. Using something like unistrut also lets you tilt side to side, up and down and to some degree also turning left and right (though less).

Kal