AV Technology - June 2008 - (Page 28)

business charge to take care of the problem before we can get the projector up and running.” The amount of time between servicing also depends on environment and usage. Sensory Technologies’ standard preventive maintenance is once a year, but it has clients with heavy projector usage that require cleanings more than a couple times a year. For projectors that are used on an average of six hours more a day, such as in classrooms, theaters, restaurants, and high-use conference rooms, Normandin says they should be disassembled and cleaned by an experienced technician at least two or three times a year. He adds that the air filters should be cleaned or replaced every 100 hours of use, according to the manufacturer’s specifications. Projectors that use DLP technology, which have high-speed color wheels that dirt has a hard time attaching to, should be disassembled and cleaned at least once a year, Normandin says. “If it’s an LCD-type machine, you need to do it twice a year,” he adds. McLeod also suggests that preventive maintenance once a year is enough for a conference room environment. “If you’re in an area with a lot of construction or the projectors are exposed to the outside, I would say twice a year,” she says. “If you have it in a club, then you probably want to do it quarterly.” SEND IT OUT OR KEEP IT IN-HOUSE? Corporations and schools with a large number of projectors face the reality that preventing projector failure can create quite a demand on its technical staff. “With 30 to 50 projectors per school, the process takes a considerable amount of time for a one- or two-person IT department to physically check all the projectors,” Payton says. “It would take a week for an IT person to check each lamp.” Not only is it physically demanding, but the in-house technical staff may not be trained to maintain a projector, aside from changing the lamp or cleaning the filter. “You don’t know how much knowledge the person has with projectors,” Sartipi says. “It’s like having someone who doesn’t know about cars try to change the filters and do an oil change. They can definitely damage it.” When an untrained person opens up the projector, he or she can throw off the convergence, scratch the lenses, cut the cables, or misalign the lenses, which can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand to fix, he adds. McLeod says if a person who is not authorized to work on a projector opens it up, it will void the warranty. “If they have their own technicians, they need to clear it through the manufacturer,” she says. Many companies offering preventive maintenance require its technical staff to be trained and certified. Sensory Technologies uses InfoComm CTS certification among others to make sure its technicians are up to speed on all practices used by AV integrators. “A lot of the manufacturers require us to maintain these certifications to sell and service their product,” says Kevin Markey, company principle. “You can’t get those by being a user. You have to be an authorized dealer that represents the manufacturer, so it’s not necessarily available to your standard internal organization AV or IT person.” At less than $200 a cleaning per projector, outsourcing preventive maintenance is a small price to pay to get the most out of a projector, but there is a breakeven point for some companies. “It’s the cost of replacement vs. maintenance,” McLeod says. “If you want your projectors to last a certain number of years, then preventive maintenance will ensure that time frame is kept to, rather than having to send the projectors out for repair or replace them faster. It’s more of a budget decision.” Katie Parrish is a technical writer based in Independence, MO. She can be reached at kateparrish@comcast.net. 28 | AV TECHNOLOGY | june 2008 http://www.spcontrols.com http://www.spcontrols.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AV Technology - June 2008

AV Technology - June 2008 Contents Precedent Corporate: Global Standardization Government: Strategic Technology Planning Education: It’s All Just a Click Pre-Empting Projector Breakdown Dealing With Technophobes Keeping Ahead of Technology Obsolescence Understanding Video Codecs Rules of Engagement Network, See & Learn Sound From the Heart Sportsbook Makes an Impact Upgrading an AV Image Product Review: Polycom’s RealPresence Experience HD Tech Horizons: A True AV Networking Standard? Product Spotlight: Digital Media Servers; Flat Panel New Products Ad Index AV MO: Calculating Fiber Optic Transmission Distance

AV Technology - June 2008

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