We have a 5 deck Supper Platter system. We origanily only had the top three deks installed. Recently, we added the bottom two. All 5 deks worked fine execpt that the take up would always be slow to start and would ometimes trip the auto shut-off, if it did not trip the auto shut-off, it would have too mutch speed from the varaiac being open so far that it would raise the caraige all the way up the post and snap the film!
We had our tech fix that problem, but now there is so mutch vibration on the decks that the prints would vibrate off center and eventualy be thrown!
I have tried adjusting the tentsion of the motors and making sure that the motor rolers have good contact with the platter. So far, nothing has worked. Maby there is somthing I am missing.
Our tech is very busy and has other mutch biger jobs to work on, so it is a big deal to get him to come out to our single screen theater.

Please help me out.

If any of you guys have any sugestions, that would be great.

Thanks!

If you dis-engage the platters and spin them by hand, do they all seem to spin freely, or could there be bearing problems?

Next: replace any of the crap rubber on those rollers! The best thing to replace them with is a Kirby vacuum belt part number 301291- these are the belts with the criss-cross 'tread' on them. Remove the old belts and THOROUGHLY clean the plastic rollers of any rubber crud, oil, grease, etc. and then install the new rubber TREAD SIDE OUT on both rollers. These belts will last FAR longer than the other types of belts for this application. They will run a bit noisier (a pleasant whirrrrr) but operate much better.

The common cause of the platter spinning too fast on startup is usually the motors are not gripping the disc well enough. The new rubber should take care of this proiblem. If it doesn't, you can always adjust the motors so they are pressing harder against the disc, That is done by tightening the two Allen head bolts that hold the motor to the bracket. Only adjust them enough to keep the disc(s) from slipping excessively or else the discs may run too slow on feedout.

Good Luck!

Timing on a 5-stacker is more critical, since the middle deck is capable of being shared. Use the middle deck as a reference for both sides.

That's what is recommended anyway with some manufacturers.

If the middle platter speed is different when you gang it to the top two or bottom two, a small adjustment of the variac wiper arm position on one of the variacs might be necessary.

Be careful when you do that, and make absolutely sure there is adequate "throw" of the wiper without jamming it against the stop when the dancer drops. Failure to heed to that precaution could and probably will cause severe damage to the variac.

With the dancer all the way down, you will observe the wiper at around 55%. I certainly would not recommend any setting lower than that. The entire dancer "throw" is about 50%. That gives you a mere 5% headroom before the wiper is broken off.

BE VERY CAREFUL!!!!!!! Super Platters do not have the most exacting specifications you might expect. Although they are quite sloppy, they are very reliable if maintained properly.

Some motors are not making 100% contact with the platter disk, would it help if they were more straight? How can I straighten them out, do I just bend the mounting bracket? Is it posible that the motors them selvs sould be bad?

I agree with you Paul, I find the these platters to be very reliable. We have not had any problems with our platters untill now. I disagree with some of the coments in the review on "Super Platters" here on Film-Tech.

One thing our tech did to improve the platter system is to replace the original controll plate with a newer design from a diffrent brand, I am not sure whitch one. This design allows us to have only two control plates and move them from disk to disk.

Thankyou all so mutch for your coments.
I will try them out in the next two weeks and will let you know of the outcome.

Thanks!

The only things that fail on supers in my experiences (and I have set up and repaired a LOT of them) are the microswitches (which are grossly underrated IMO) the motors themselves (the brushes are difficult to change and the resistors have a tendency to crack in half with excessive vibration and heat) and the aforementioned rubber belts (which last FAR longer if you are using the 'treaded' Kirby belts).

I am guessing that your tech retrofitted Strong phase control brains to your Supers. We have a few decks in Cloverdale that have those brains installed and they seem to work OK.

You can try bending the bracket that attaches the motor to the tree but be careful when you do, just bend it far enough to assure the rollers track the disc evenly.

Aaron

The control plates are solid black and are a tremendous improvement compared to the origional ones. They do work very well. I like them becouse they can be easly removed for cleaning and maintence. They use thier own platter spindle that is set inside the super platter spindle with a set screw. The design works very well, the plates just slip down inside with two contact pins to conect the feed out switch.

The Kirby belts did the trick!

I am amazed at the difrence they make. The middle platter still vibrates, but other than that, the problem is fixed.

Thank You gentleman for all of your sugestions.