• Coffee Table
  • Day 1
  • Day 2
  • Day 3
  • Day 4
  • Day 5
  • Day 6
  • Day 7
  • Day 8
  • Day 9
  • Day 10
  • Conclusion
• Whiteboard

Day 1

Gathering Materials

Living in a small city whenever I embark on a project such as this it is generally hard to find materials that are right for the job so I generally start with what is available and if all seems well move on to procuring the right materials at the right sizes. With a quick pass through the local hardware store I picked up a sheet of acrylic at 90cm x 60cm that would be used for my proof of concept design along with four 1 metre lengths of angular aluminium extrusion. I picked up a sheet of Double Matt Drafting Film from a local art store, A1 (594mm x 841mm) just shy of the height I wanted and wider than needed but adequate for the job at hand. If I was to get things made to size I would have gotten my acrylic cut to 82cm x 62cm to allow for a 1cm border and at a 1cm thickness to avoid any sagging, as it is the acrylic doesn't allow for a border vertically and has 8cm plus border space of unused area horizontally. The drafting film is a little short vertically meaning that in order to cover a screen at my intended height I would have had to cut down an A0 sheet.

Construction

First I built an aluminium frame for the acrylic sheet to ensure its stability and added a sheet of the drafting film to the underside of the acrylic, the result was quite nice.

After this was done I purchased a cheap door mirror from a bargain store just to check measurements of the reflected projection and to ensure that the reflection quality was all that it should be. After I was satisfied I purchased a real mirror of the same size as the acrylic sheet (90cm x 60cm) and used that in the proof of concept so that I could see the entire image all at once. I propped the screen up on some storage boxes and had the projector running upside-down on an empty cardboard box. The test was sufficiently successful that I decided to get hold of some slotted angle iron to build up a sturdy frame and mount the screen, mirror and projector to it for further testing. (You can see the first mirror in the background)