Hello Film-Tech,
A friend of mine gave me a Strong Simplex 35 PR1014 with a 5 Star sound head from the campus theater at our alma mater. Having a few years experience with 16mm and knowing full well what a financially ruinous phrase “free projector” is, I took it anyway and I’m looking to make a portable projector cart out of it for home use. I don’t have a dedicated projection booth and really don’t have the option to build one in my house, so it has to be something that can be rolled away and stored somewhere else when I’m done projecting.
I have a solution, or at least a plan for most of the foreseeable challenges except for film supply and take-up. I don’t have room or budget for a platter system and I’d rather not use magazines that would limit me to 2000’ reels. Ideally I’d use reel arms like Kelmar or similar, but at $1000-$2000, new ones are definitely out of my budget. An unused set just went on eBay for $200 a few weeks ago and I just can’t kick myself hard enough for missing it.
I’ll make a specific WTB post as well, but are there any other options out there? The projector has a 2” bolt spacing for the supply on top and a 5.5” bolt spacing for the take-up on the bottom, which I gather is a standard across several manufacturers. It does have an open pulley in the sound head gearbox that I’m pretty sure is for driving a take-up reel. I assume there has to be some sort of clutch on the take-up arm that converts the constant velocity of the drive pulley to constant torque at the reel, correct?
Thanks for any guidance anyone may have. This community has already been a tremendous resource in learning about what I’m dealing with here.
A friend of mine gave me a Strong Simplex 35 PR1014 with a 5 Star sound head from the campus theater at our alma mater. Having a few years experience with 16mm and knowing full well what a financially ruinous phrase “free projector” is, I took it anyway and I’m looking to make a portable projector cart out of it for home use. I don’t have a dedicated projection booth and really don’t have the option to build one in my house, so it has to be something that can be rolled away and stored somewhere else when I’m done projecting.
I have a solution, or at least a plan for most of the foreseeable challenges except for film supply and take-up. I don’t have room or budget for a platter system and I’d rather not use magazines that would limit me to 2000’ reels. Ideally I’d use reel arms like Kelmar or similar, but at $1000-$2000, new ones are definitely out of my budget. An unused set just went on eBay for $200 a few weeks ago and I just can’t kick myself hard enough for missing it.
I’ll make a specific WTB post as well, but are there any other options out there? The projector has a 2” bolt spacing for the supply on top and a 5.5” bolt spacing for the take-up on the bottom, which I gather is a standard across several manufacturers. It does have an open pulley in the sound head gearbox that I’m pretty sure is for driving a take-up reel. I assume there has to be some sort of clutch on the take-up arm that converts the constant velocity of the drive pulley to constant torque at the reel, correct?
Thanks for any guidance anyone may have. This community has already been a tremendous resource in learning about what I’m dealing with here.
Comment