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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Topic: What makes older projectors better than newer ones?
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John Walsh
Film God
Posts: 2490
From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted 01-15-2002 10:29 AM
I think the key thing here is when a real person maintains the equipment, it can run indefinitely.My own feeling about new vs. older projectors is that while the machining accuracy has improved, the quality of parts, assembly and some engineering has gone down. For example, I'm fixing ten Simplex PR1050s we bought about 7 years ago. The stainless steel gate lateral guide rollers have all rusted. I don't think anyone tightened the set screws for the pins that hold the lateral guide rollers because they are all loose. To get room to work, I sometimes have to unplug a 3-pin Molex connector that controls the aperture. Apparently, the Molex pins were crimped wrong, because I see someone stuck a soldering iron in there and soldered the wires to the crimp pins. While that did get the projectors out the door, the wires now break off very easily when you try to unplug the connector. A fairly simple job has now turn in to a nightmare. It also looks like they removed the feed sprocket film stripper to make room for a wire. I think this would be crazy, especially with polyester film. Just my own $0.02.
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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster
Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 01-15-2002 07:10 PM
I don't completely agree that newer machines are all bad, in fact with a couple of exceptions they are actually better in may ways.
Take the X-L for example. The main casting has been made much thicker and heavier over the years. Iahve personally machined off about 100 fronts of X=L's over the years and I can definately testify that the older castings were sometimes paper thin above the lens mount, same for the gear side. Newer castings are far thicker, less porus, andleak less, expecially when you get a new one that is painted at the factory. There have also been numerous improvements to the X-L intermittent such as the addition of an oil passageway to the end of the Starwheel bushing to help allevialte this common point of seize. Also, seals have been between the intermittent carrige and mainframe, intermittent and carrage, and a seal at the outer end of the starwheel. The starshaft seal serves two fold, 1. to prevent film crud form getting back down the starwheel shaft, and a possible resultant seized shaft, and 2. To keep the oil in the machinery. I don't however agree with the latest round of gate/trap assemblys. IMHO they goofed it up there. Another VERY important improvement that was done was to move the upper sprocket up higher to allow lenses to rotate in the turrett without having to open the darn thing up. If they'd only go back to the old sstyle trap it would be a great machine. While there was quantity production for a couple of years here in the states it has gone either back to normal or less than normal(more likely) than it was. There is one machine, all belt driven, that I won't go into here. It doesn't qualify! There are two very old machines I make exception too, and in my opinion they are the best ever made. One is the old cast iron Century C, and the second would be the E-7, which is still a commonly found machine in film labs today. I've never seen either one of these have any problems running polyestar film, ever. That may be another story with a Super or Standard though, I don't have any customers still running them. They may require some minor adjustments to the gate springs to get the proper tension but I can't imagine them not being able to run the stuff either.
Mark @ GTS
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