WHAT'S NEW PAGE 15

January 2023

New Year, new page.

I told you about my somewhat odd spurt of interest in Standard 8. I'm not sure it's a subject I've covered much on this site. As I have spent a fair bit of time now working on three (plus a spares machine) Kodak Sound 8 machines, I thought I would add some pix.

The first pic here isn't actually one of mine; I think the rest are. Anyway, they illustrate some of what I regard as the less attractive  features of this machine. First, it is built into a wooden box. Such cases suffer from knocks and bangs and damp and can readily end up looking tatty and with rusty screwheads (and other parts inside). Access is not simple. Between the main control switch below the lamphouse and the take-up spool is  a cover partially enclosing the sound head. You have to remove the single screw that retains this cover, then tip the cover towards you to lift it out past the record/playback slider that is in the way.Then, you remove four screws (one can be seen above the lamphouse) BUT before you can proceed further, you must remove the ECC83 valve hiding under the sound head cover or risk smashing it.THEN tilt the mech towards you and reach carefully round behind it to struggle personfully to disconnect the very stiff multi-pin link plug of the cable between amp and mech, seen dangling loose in pic 2. Might as well mark it and the spot it comes from first, so you can be sure to put it back correctly. Then lift forward up and out and you get the largely anonymous lump as seen from the back in pic two (the front stays the same). The amp, under that plate Anear the bottom of the pic, stays in the case unless you remove it separately. Pic 5 shows what it looks like from the front with lamphouse removed to reveal the 12v 100w Mae West-style lamp, used in all the machines I have, tho' there might be other versions. There seems to be nowhere, but nowhere, that is designed for the addition of lubrication.

I got into this detail to make the point about how problematic this machine is for the amateur wanting to keep it going, although I have to say that on the evidence of two of these machines, everything still seems to work well after about 60 years - even the amps! Three and four above show some some of the mech, all sandwiched between two main plates. I would not like to try to do anything between these; I would be afraid of ending up with a pile of bits and no idea how to put them all back together. I did change part of the top spool arm where the plastc has split open, rendering it non-functioning. This involved fiddling with tiny circlips, which I doubt were intended to be re-used, and juggling a number of parts that are unlike any others I have ever seen on a projector. Some bushes/bearings are plastic (as are some critical parts - and plastic does not always age well), you can see that the strips connecting the two main plates have twisted metal joints rather than anything more conventional. The flywheel is layers of steel sheet bound together, so it rusts in the damp exuded by the wooden case. And the cover/duct for the cooling fan, right at the front of pic 2, is made entirely of stiff card. Overall, the machine is a combination of over-engineering, coupled with over-complexity and downright parsimony in construction. And the verdammten thing won't stand up straight  when you get it out because of its weird shape.

You can tell I find this machine a bit frustrating (I took apart a 16mm Kodak Pageant once and it was just the same). Nor have I yet mentioned the drive mechanism. Yet this machine is capable of very good results. The first one I tackled was as expected the easiest - it had been in regular use - and I can take little credit for what is a good machine with cracking sound - this despite the fact that one of the valves was missing - somebody must have changed something once upon a time. 
I can take a bit more credit for the second machine. It was definitely running a bit slow, with that weird drawl-y sound track. 

You can see in pic1 the ECC83 re-installed for test purposes. Two and three show that there is a similarity of approach as regards the drive  to that of the Eumig Mark S and many of its later iterations, which immediately set alarm bells ringing in my head. Its another example of the complexity of this machine. The central control knob (pic1) operates forward, reverse and still and also 16 or 24fps - the lamp has both a separate on-off switch and a dim/bright switch. I do not really understand all the ins and outs of what you see here - at the back is the motor, which its shaft facing directly forward at you, with a rubber roller that is brought into contact with either side. Unlike the Eumig, it is the mech that does the moving. But I do not really know what those three plastic wheels are for. Anyway, with the Eumig in mind, I first tried cleaning all the obvious drive surfaces - I used meths. Contrary to my expectation, this did the trick without further ado. However, the light from Ms West was very poor. Judging by the first machine, this is not normal. It seems to be due to the particular  lamp ( an A1/xxx 12v 100w (Mae West) having severe discolourisation and flaking of the silvering. I found I had only two spares, one nearly as bad. I want to save the other for emergencies and also they seem to cost an arm and a leg nowadays, so I converted this machine to the more readily available A1/xxx 12v 100w dichroic mirror lamp (I can never remember lamp numbers). Light seems to be at least as good and, in accordance with strict Cinerdistan principles, it was achieved without any irreversible change to the projector. I shall have to follow the Second Commandment (Never Throw Anything Away) and tape the few parts I didn’t re-use inside the case somewhere.

What I did was to remove the lamp platform and the (only three) screws and springs holding it in place. The original lamp presses down through this platform, with 3 irregular pins passing through holes in the platform, turning then rising up pushed by the lamp socket spring into contact  with the platform, at the correct alignment. The screws and springs are just for fine adjustment of the lamp position. I re-used the screws to support a new platform, leaving the socket where it was.

The new platform carries a lampholder set on pillars with washers to a suitable height and location (took a lot of measuring and agonising trying to get it right, and it’s a tight fit at the back where you can’t see it up against the projector drive mechanism). To avoid cutting or having to lengthen any of the wires, I fixed a (ceramic) connector to the edge of the platform and just transferred the wires across. First test was dim, but I made some adjustments and it was as good as Mae. One thing I noted that I felt slightly unhappy about was that although one of the lamp wires passed to the base of the holder in the usual way, the other was just connected to the original platform. It appears to me that the current must pass thru all the connected metal parts of the machine. I'm not sure how dangerous this might be - probably not too much at 12v - but it leaves me uneasy and I avoided it for the conversion.

I was then able to turn my attention to the third machine, which is proving an altogether tougher proposition. It is fighting a vigorous reargaurd action and, so far, it is winning. That, however, is a whole different story to which I shall return later.