ZA/AZ L335A Projector

A short communication about this unknown projector.

Some years ago a good friend of mine [Bendixxx] sends me a gift. It was a collection of some old parts of an organ build around 1900. These parts I received were some spare parts and the modernisation of this organ made these superfluous. I found that these little projectors are quite funny. 12 small bulbs with 12 slides and maybe 12 or more little lenses to project each slide with numbers or letters on a matt screen in front.

I build one in my Circus Clock [ https://hackaday.com/2018/01/03/celebrate-display-diversity-for-a-circuit-circus-clock/ ]. Dan Maloney wrote that “plus a real oddball, an old electromechanical display with individual slides for each character and a rear-screen projector. … We’d really like more information on the projector display, though.” Also in the comments “Sadiq Mohamed (@sid1950) says:

January 3, 2018 at 5:50 pm

(F)ran Blanch did a piece about that projection display. (Down the Video.)  I believe she has acquired a box of them.

I checked [Fran]s side and found that my projector is different." (All hail to [Fran] for the great videos)

So I opened one and documented this in the following pictures and comments. I found nothing about these projectors in the web. On the side a AZ or ZA as logo is visible:
So I decided to name these ZA L335A- The L335A is marked on the top of the projectors.

Collection of different AZ L335A projectors. On bulb array was removed. Clearly visible the German print “oben” and English “top”. The voltage of the bulbs are 5 to 6 volts.

Bulb array.

The back side of the PCB.

5 volts and g(l)o! 120mA each bulb.

Inside. Clearly visible two sets of lenses and some aluminium sheets with holes for the bulbs. The slides with the numbers are behind the smooth glass plate in the middle of bulbs and projector lenses.

Disassambled slide tray. From the left: lenses, slide, cover glass and mask. The right position in the tray is cover glass, slides, lenses and then the mask.

For my circus clock i remove the bulbs and replace them with 3 mm LEDs. It fits perfectly. Use some rainbow LEDs and you got the real unicorn shit!

In the following the video from Fran.