Kinoton FP20/30 vs. Kinoton FP-30D

[Jerry G. Axelsson]

Hello colleagues and friends,

I am curious to hear your oppinion about the older Kinoton FP20/30 with belt drive vs. later Kinoton FP-30D with direct drive.

The later ones with direct drive I have used quite a bit with rewarding results.

Are the older ones with belt drive stable or more or less a subject to frustration with keeping the belt in good shape with proper tension etc.?
I have also heard that the belt drive can cause vibration in the machine which affects focus etc.

Curious to hear what your experience over the years have been with the older version.

Thank you in advance.

[Phillip Grace]

Hello Jerry.

A search through the FT Forum Archive will produce some useful comments on the older models. They were not without problems, which were better resolved as the later versions were introduced. From an operator's point of view I think the older ones were practically hostile. Pad rollers would not stay open while threading. There was very little room to open the gate for threading and cleaning, and tricky failsafe rollers. The whole range seemed to me to have been designed by technicians to achieve the optimum performance and protection for the film itself, with the minimum possible number of components, but with no interest in ergonomics or the humans who were to operate the machines in real life conditions. The situation improved as time passed, but persisted even until the end of production of the "E" Series.
That is not to denigrate the manufacturer at all. Their machines were capable of excellent performance and service life, and embraced new materials - ceramics and plastics - and technology as it became available, resulting at best in truly excellent screen results.
I think if motion picture projection technology had been invented at the end of the Twentieth century, instead of the end of the Nineteenth, the Kinoton E series is exactly what would have been produced. Sadly though, the humans seemed to have been put in second place.

[Gordon McLeod]

Hello Jerry.

A search through the FT Forum Archive will produce some useful comments on the older models. They were not without problems, which were better resolved as the later versions were introduced. From an operator's point of view I think the older ones were practically hostile. Pad rollers would not stay open while threading. There was very little room to open the gate for threading and cleaning, and tricky failsafe rollers. The whole range seemed to me to have been designed by technicians to achieve the optimum performance and protection for the film itself, with the minimum possible number of components, but with no interest in ergonomics or the humans who were to operate the machines in real life conditions. The situation improved as time passed, but persisted even until the end of production of the "E" Series.
That is not to denigrate the manufacturer at all. Their machines were capable of excellent performance and service life, and embraced new materials - ceramics and plastics - and technology as it became available, resulting at best in truly excellent screen results.
I think if motion picture projection technology had been invented at the end of the Twentieth century, instead of the end of the Nineteenth, the Kinoton E series is exactly what would have been produced. Sadly though, the humans seemed to have been put in second place.

I disagree I find the FP20 very ergometric to operate clean and maintain I always felt the optical sound head was the weak point and the 4 track mag head was very weak.

[David Ferguson]

I always felt the optical sound head was the weak point and the 4 track mag head was very weak.

What do you think isn’t so good about the optical soundhead? I have a FP38EC which was made pre the RSSD readers, so has the FP20 style soundhead, and I’ve had no issues with it (aside from it not playing cyan prints!). Drum and flywheel seem to work well, and while I’ve not properly aligned it yet, the quality is good.

[Sam Chavez]

I never had any issue with the original version being reliable but the signal to noise ratio was poor and the fact that the solar cell faced the front wall of the booth allowed pickup of screen image bouncing off the port glass. The tiny exciter lamps and a very inefficient slit lens didn't provide the best image all the way to the ends of of the soundtrack and yielded a sort of mushy sound at high modulation levels. Amplitude compression for sure. The red readers improved all this as part of the conversion to SR.D.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Having run hundreds of reels on the FP-38D (Combination of FP-20 35mm and FP-18D 16mm)(see the Warehouse photos http://www.film-tech.com/warehouse/w...911&category=1 ) I can say a few things:

• The automatic lens turrets/aperture changers are more headache than they are worth (And in my case, made the installed 4-track mag useless as they put the heads way out of position for sync);
• The film threading path as designed is stupid, see the photos for the changed path I used that never failed at a splice or scratched film, and was MUCH simpler;
• I agree with the stupid failsafe design as mentioned by Phillip...I bypassed the switches on mine. (easy to do, it was a magnetic reed switch that I swung the bracket away from the magnet.);
• Sam is spot-on with the optical sound, I replaced them with BACP readers and added Dolby Digital penthouse readers later (and used the former mag head position for a DTS timecode reader);
• The 16mm side was prone to motor noise (inverter carrier whine) getting into the sound (microphonics from the very tiny exciter lamp filament...I did some damping on the lamp itself which helped but did not eliminate it.;
• The 35mm side always ran well, despite the small timing belt drive to the intermittent. Never had issues with belt tension, but as shown in the pictures, the "Standard" frictions (take-ups) with the giant chain sprocket were terrible for keeping good tension on split reels with lab cores and even standard hub 2000' metal reels
• The electronics for the drives (specifically the relays for the speed control cards) sucked, they failed and were hard to find (and very expensive as well.) But the Lense Inverter for the motor(s) was solid and very reliable.

Overall, I think they are great machines, very easy on the film (with the modified threading I used) and projected rock steady images. They do require a fair amount of upkeep and if the framing coupling wore out, you'd end up with the "Ballantyne bounce" and replacing that cooupling is a chore.

[Gordon McLeod]

What do you think isn’t so good about the optical soundhead? I have a FP38EC which was made pre the RSSD readers, so has the FP20 style soundhead, and I’ve had no issues with it (aside from it not playing cyan prints!). Drum and flywheel seem to work well, and while I’ve not properly aligned it yet, the quality is good.

Depending on the angle one often had to add or remove disks from the flywheel side on the older ones and often flutter was a issue

[Stefan Scholz]

I like the last ones produced, they run smooth, and the newer generation of design engineers at Kinotone did really learn how to improve the original projector.
The belt drive, typical for Philips, never ran vibration free. The singlephase induction motor had an ellyptical run pattern, not a round. It was always cramped to load film with the turrets. The turrets on the very early ones, horrible.
I have never really liked Philips projectors. The 1950's proverb - Do you insist on Philips, or do you want quality rightaway? - has been true. Which does not mean they were bad, there were a lot of engineering marvels, precision in the cvonstruction, but like most of there products, far from being oriented on user friendlyness and in many cases prototype standard that went into series production.

Then, think of pulsed mercury lamps, clover leaf condensor Xenon lamps, and other interesting constructions with these machines, which in theory were great, but genuinely failed in real life.

The original soundhead is great, the "S" loading ensures absolutely stable rotation without any influence from sprockets or intermittent movement, It was taken from the Nitsche times, bettern known as FP 5/6/7 projectors. If it wasn't for the slit lens and 6.5V/ 9W intended for radio frequency heating. The slit lens and lamp had better S/N ratio, than the reverse scanning at Norelco AA, where the whole optics from light guide to lens and slit has even been worse. The Philite holder in many cased gave bad contact, and to maintain constant light, a current controlled PS was mandatory,. The lamp filament, quite thin, sagged over timer, with the result of an uneven slit illumination in the IR spectrum, which in result lead to modulation distortion with variable area tracks.

The modern digital SH designers didn't understand the "S" loading principle, with sometimes horrible wow on splices until stabilised again. Kinotone integrated countermeasures as extra rollers, but that's curing the symptom, not the case. It worked ok, though. And with modern prints no problem. Suddenly the pickup S/NR was great. Some folks tend to say, the older lamp based pickup sounds better. A different story. There's way more distortions, which conceal some of the initial problems with optical recordings and pickup, that dominate in the new reverse scan red LED readers.

So, if your'e into these constructions, go for the most recent ones. They are fabulous. I love our results on screen. My ones are FP30Ds from last productions, 6 kW lamps for 25' screen size, stepped down last generation lenses from Isco and Schneider.
I can't imagine any better. The overall image improved over the 1964 FP 20s I owned years ago on the same spot as a test install.

[Steve Guttag]

The mechanism from the FP20 and FP30 were essentially the same till the end of the company. The "D" versions were direct drive, which also were inverter drive. The late-model projectors with the "A" suffix were belt drive (gear belt) with an aluminum plate to hold the motor pretty close to the intermittent...however the body of the motor faced into the projector so it didn't protrude on the non-op side. I didn't find any great advantage or disadvantage to the "A" versus "D" versions, in that respect. The motor ran at 48Hz and the pulleys were in a 1:1 ratio, as I recall. I even retrofitted an FP28 with a modern "A" kit to install a variable speed kit with preset speeds.

The traditional FP20s were more compact and I found them, particularly with their substantial "foot" to be more rigid. The FP30 series could get twisted out of square as it is easy to get its feet (that look like lawnmower blades) to be set asymmetrical. Plus, when one wants to go to more than 5-degrees, you have to start putting extensions, change pivot points...etc. The FP20 series was more elegant as you started with a greater range and the pivot point never changed, you just walked your way to the set of holes that would work for your installation to secure the foot to the column.

The original Kinoton optical sound reader sucked and there is just no two ways about it. The drum was tooooooo small. As such, the film had to work too hard to try an spin it...combine that with open bearings that would "hoover" up dust, film shedding, popcorn soot...whatever, you'd get wow and flutter out of them. Gordon is right about the cell facing forward being a problem...don't turn on a work light...it WILL see it. Forget about fluorescents too...it will see them. I also found them to be inconsistent from machine to machine with respect to their slit lenses. You could get one dialed in pretty good but its mate would not behave the same. Conversely, the RSSD was quite good and addressed most of these issues. The proof was in the Dolby Digital part...they tracked very well. if you have problems with a basement reader tracking Dolby Digital, you have problems with your optical soundhead and are only noticing it on digital but you do have a problem on optical sound as well. And yes, the Kinoton flywheel thing of various plates on the original optical sound reader was also a bone of contention if you wanted low wow/flutter AND the sound to be up to speed by changeover. That was nearly impossible. Then again, the changeovers in the original machines sucked so bad you were not going to have a clean changeover anyway. The late model Kinotons (rotary solenoids) did much better on changeovers too. I still favor the violent but effective Kelmar style changeovers...don't over think it...we have two positions...open or closed.

The lens turrets on Kinotons...I hated them. In the name of stability (not having the image fall out of alignment or focus), they didn't make it move which made is a PITA to thread. They relented, eventually, by allowing it to move fore/aft to help with threading but still. We converted turret machines to single-lens, if they were in a 2-projector system. Even our multiplexes that put in Kinotons tended towards single-lens and just swapped based on the film.

Take ups, Tony's assessment is correct...you need "accelerated frictions" if you wanted to take up on any hub smaller than 5-inches (so that would be shipping reels, cores...etc.). We always ordered them with accelerated frictions, if they were getting mechanical frictions. Note, the AA2 also didn't want to run small hubs. I forget if they would handle the 4" hub of a shipping reel or not...definitely wouldn't handle cores in the 1-3 inch sizes).

So, back to the OP question. If you have FP30Ds at your access, I'd go with them. They are pretty trouble free, as projectors go. I'd have no problem using the older belt drive ones either. That said, if they are (skinny) V-belt type machines, the speeds aren't going to be too accurate. Definitely, in the US, their 60Hz version of things tended to be a bit off. I would try to move to an inverter driven motor and switch to gear belts, if possible. But the base mechanism is fine. Just make sure that the intermittent couplings are not shot or you'll have jump in the picture.

[Stefan Scholz]

Steve had good points, that I share.
THe couplers are probably what should be replaced with projectors even of last production run in average plex environments. People operating trend to use the framing, actuate it harshly, and often, which kills the couplers. So the image stability is ruined. It's not a difficult task, as long as you have the spare parts, which include couplers and seal rings. After that, the image is pristine.
And we also removed the last generation turrets from our KTs, going for single holders, whuich in a 1 auditorium house is the best way, as there are 7 formats existing, with sets of lenses. So even more convenient to have preadjusted lenses on hand. Just, the remote focusing on the single lensholder of the D, an ellyptical rod rotated between the actuating screw and the lensholder bed sucks, genuine Philips.
The way it's done on the EC II, a motor turning the screw is way more advanced.
The takeup spindles on mine are dancing arm controlled electronic, the feeding spindles are dynamic brake ones, relying on the generator resistor dynamic braking. These work extremely nice, and I am happy that we changed it from the friction felt ones.

[David Ferguson]

Thanks for the info on the soundhead. Not wanting to hijack this thread, but it sounds like I should be looking to upgrade from the older FP20 style one to the modern RSSD. But it’s not a drop-in upgrade, is it? From pictures I’ve seen, flywheel Iain a different location so I’d need to drill out a hole for that. Anyone experienced with what this upgrade involves?

Ive also heard reference to the “original Kinoton Dolby Digital reader”, which wasn’t reverse scan, and apparently may have been a drop in replacement for the FP20 reader? Anyone know anything about this?

[Steve Guttag]

The RSSD is a drop-in replacement for the original soundhead. On an FP20, the front of the soundhead will hang in front of the projector (not flush with the front) but it is of no consequence. So, if you have any donor PK60, FP30-FP50 projectors, those soundheads will fit the FP20...and you can either use the plates of your FP20 or use the donor's flywheel. Don't forget that you also need the power supply (powers the LEDs and the pre-amp on the analog reader. For an FP20, you need to have the power supply that runs on line voltage rather than off of a 24VDC rail (or you'll need to supply the DC supply too). The FP20 will not have what you need, power wise, aside from the line voltage. Note, the power supply can be configured for 230 (200-240) or 120V (how the primary windings are wired.

[Jerry G. Axelsson]

Thank you all for most insightful descriptions and details about the pros and cons for these projectors. I must say that I like the slick look of an older FP20.
The FP-30D is larger and a bit less appealing, but it is the results on screen which counts in the end.

I am also looking for a lamphouse of this type to an FP-30D. It is a small Kinoton lamphouse for 1000W bulbs.
Note that the height of the lamphouse is about equal to the shutter housing. So it lean and a bit longer rather than square.

If anypne can help with such a lamphouse in good condition, please let me know.

Kinotonlamphouse.jpg

[Stefan Scholz]

Are you referring to this lamphouse? This is smallest of the universal type of the last series that I know to exist. There were others, like an octagonal shaped one with improper cooling and more.
This is the one mounted to the projector in my flat in Berlin.

I am running a DXL 21SN on minimum current. Probably larger bulb than designed, but it was on hand NOS in box. Socket modified to accommodate it, it works neatly.
It's the Kinotone analog only soundhead, the reverse scan type works flawless on this one. Way improved over the ancient Philips type.
Yes, this FP still has the dreaded modern turret, afair the polyurethane drive belt is disintigrating. Replacement sucks.

[Steve Guttag]

FP23, me thinks.

I'd think that a late-model Universal 1-2K lamphouse would be more readily available than one of the smaller versions. There are probably "705" lamphouses out there that would work too (precursor to the universal 1-2K). The 705 had fans on the top (one blowing in, the other out. The Universal had a small fan blowing in on the rear (really just blowing across the lamp) as there was a deflection plate for the rear opening and a large muffin fan on top to blow out.