FixYourDLP.com Forums

Just ordered the bulb from discount merchant. Delivery was quick, got it in 2 days. first thing I noticed was there was a bunch of crap on and around the original bulb (the bulb had not yet failed but had 6000 hours on it and was getting dimmer)..it looked like corrosion on a car battery terminal, sort of chalky. It was nowhere near the electrical connectors. I cleaned it out and went on replacing the bulb. 2nd problem, the screw from the original bulb connector did not thread into the new bulb (the side connector) I ended up finding one in my shop that fit with a little modification (it was too long, used some washers to make it fit) this was quite annoying (considering it was pure luck that I found a screw that fit), 3rd problem was after all this messing with the bulb i managed to get lint and other contaminates on the bulb. Used an alcohol wipe but it had a lot of imperfections, i cleaned it up as best as possible with a cloth and installed it. All seems to be good now. I'm not sure why they tell you not to touch the bulb housing without gloves, friend of mine is a licenced repair technician for Toshiba and Samsung, he was taught to hold on to the bulb with your bare hands, just avoid touching the clear lens as contaminates can interfere with the light output, causing a distorted picture. If you do touch it, simply clean it with alcohol + lint free cloth. The mercury bulb itself is contained inside the lens, so there's no fear of touching the actual gas bulb (if you did, it would defiantly fail much like a halogen bulb).. Any idea what the chalky crap was inside the bulb housing? almost looks like maybe a glue RCA used that turned to powder from the heat of the bulb..

It's not glue. It's in all spent bulbs usually when they blow though. It could be a variety of things from the coating they use in the reflector, to the ceramic in the post, or from the manufacturing process itself. I don't know what it is either.