Gadgetory

buying or borrowing a projector for a family movie night is a great way to capture some of that movie magic but if you ever tried to project onto a bedsheet or a blank wall you know that the image quality can be pretty awful but spending the cash for a high-end projection screen doesn't always make sense I'm Donald Bell and in today's how-to I'm going to show you how to build your own gigantic projection screen for just $100 now if you check the home theater forms you're gonna find dozens of very strong opinions on the best materials to use for your DIY projection screen some people use blackout cloth some people use reflective paint some people swear by white vinyl but what I use for my experiment was white spandex white pearlized spandex is a projection material that gets used a lot in theatrical productions it's relatively affordable its reflective enough to catch the projection light and because it's stretchy you can really dream big when it comes to your projection size the only problem is that it can be difficult to track down the good stuff I got this from a company called Rose brand that specializes in fee at Racal fabrics this is their Tendo style fabric comes in a 10-foot width and I got two yards of it for about $50 now it's the most expensive part of this whole equation but it's also the most critical so i'm idea was instead of hanging this up and putting holes in my wall i could create a frame and pull the spandex over the frame and for that i use PVC pipe it took some planning and some trial and error but $45 worth of 3/4 inch PVC pipes and joints gave me a fairly solid self standing 10 foot wide framework for my screen you can find photos and a bill of materials over on my full post at how to see Netcom so for the next step I had tried to figure out how to stretch the spandex over the frame my first idea was to use bedsheet clips on the corners but the end result got the screen all bunched up it looked pretty ugly so my bright idea was to actually fold the spandex in half and create a pocket by sealing the edges and then pulling that over the frame only problem is I don't know how to sew and I was about to get started on $50 worth of spandex so instead I use this this is fabric adhesive tape also called stitch which with this and an iron about 20 minutes on the floor I was able to get a reasonable stitch on this and seal up both edges like a giant envelope now the stitch doesn't have to be perfect it's all gonna get stretched out anyways and if you turn it inside out like a t-shirt it actually looks pretty decent looks better than you'd think so the final step is to pull the spandex over the frame but before we do that I just want to point out one thing here on the design that I learned the hard way when I first made this there was a bar going right down the middle but because was flush against the fabric and the fabric had a little transparency to it it caused a shadow on the screen right in the middle and it was a total deal-breaker so to fix that I moved this middle support bar back away from the screen so that you're no longer you getting that shadow it takes a little extra tinkering and a few extra pieces but it's totally worth it now if you're trying to do this by yourself I would recommend tackling one corner at a time going back and forth you can try to pull the fabric tight to take out any of the creases or wrinkles that might be in the fabric and then tighten things up in the back by pulling it over that hump in the back there and then pulling it down tight and then you're gonna have a pretty good looking screen hopefully and just realize that once the lights go out you're not going to see a lot of the the wrinkles and creases you'll see in the light of day so there you go this is the final result a 10 foot wide screen that you can take anywhere all for just 100 bucks and the best part is you can break it down and store it in your closet it doesn't have to hang out in your house all the time it may not be cinema file quality but I'm pretty proud of it we're how to's like this you can head over to how to cnet.com and for more on projectors like this epson 50:20 ub you go to cnn.com slash projectors I'm Donna bell for C net go out there and make something cool