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Heurtier

(Click for Cinegel )

The machine I lusted after most as a young nerd was the Heurtier Universal. It had a very distinctive look and lots of interchangeable bits to play with. It wasn't until much later that I got one. It was in the form of a double band machine, best described with a picture. It has a second sound head, belt driven from the projector, and two amplifiers. I regret to say I have never actually used it for all the exciting things it says it can do in the original sales brochure, but any true projector nerd will understand why I had to have it.

It is not, incidentally, a true Universal. It is the Panoralux, which took up to a 1200w lamp and which has a larger lens barrel - it's Debrie/Siemens size. The long thing sticking out the front of the projector is for mounting an anamorphic. In fact, I mostly use it for an in-line reversing prism. The Heurtier needs a twist in 9.5 sound film to bring the track to the correct side. I don't like that, so I thread the film the wrong way and use the prism (and rotate the sound mask in the separate 9.5 sound gate thru 180 degrees). 

 

             

This is what the brochure says it should be like; in fact the poor old thing has been much modified, but I also have another stand-alone Panoralux, which is in original condition and uses a very strange exciter lamp.    I dunno how the pic will come out, but it's a 25mm dia envelope, 15mm dia base with a single pin, overall length 75mm, vertical filament. A label on the machine says 8v 4a Phillips 115. I have been unable to find any trace of such a lamp anywhere. There is one of the G series of exciter lamps that is the same volts/amps, but the filament is horizontal.  If anyone can help, please let me know.

Have acquired new information. By a stroke of serendipity, I found one advertised on French ebay and bought it. This one is a Mazda version and it says on the box "CYL AXIAL 8V 4A BA15S".

 

EXCITER LAMP FOR HEURTIER UNIVERSAL AND PANORALUX PROJECTORS

Single centre pin

No side pins on cap

Single solder blob on side as shown

Burns horizontally

 

  This picture of my stand-alone machine gives a better view of the projector itself. It's really a semi-professional machine; there is a very heavy flywheel with a sprung pinch roller that presses on the film. There is also a pair of sprung smoothing rollers (bit like B&H) as well; the net result is it takes a moment or two to settle down on start-up, even with the flywheel given a gentle turn to get it going. I just use longer leaders.

Here are a couple of pix from Don Sykes, whose Heurtier has the curious feature that the 9.5 to 16 sound slit adapter is absent.

    

At one stage, the projector on the double-band stack unit began to have difficulty starting and to go slow. In the end, it turned out that two fibre gears inside had stripped some of their teeth. These gears were on a single shaft, parallel to a second shaft on which were two metal gears. A fairly crude pin arrangement moved the fibre gears along their shaft, connecting with the metal gears in a different position – pretty much like a car gearbox. This gave sound and silent speeds, with an intermediate neutral position. Getting at them required significant dismantling; I then had to have new (brass) gears cut, through the good offices of Spondon Films, which restored the machine somewhat. For the record, there were a 21 tooth fibre gear (22mm diameter over teeth, 16mm long) and a 14 tooth metal gear at one end of the paired shafts, and an 18 tooth fibre gear (19mm over teeth and 15mm long) with a 17 tooth metal gear, at the other end.

However, the Heurtier motor was a condenser start motor, where the condenser (66MuF as I recall) was only briefly in circuit at start-up. This is in contrast to machines such as the Vox where the condenser is permanently in circuit. The original motor was operated by a three position switch; up = off, centre = run, and down against a spring = start, returning to centre position as soon as the motor is under way. The problem was, with all that slow running and difficulty starting, I maybe held the switch in the down position too long, and either that, or the strain of running against the extra load from the stripped gears, "cooked" the motor rather. There is now a Debrie motor; this too is condenser start, but there is an auto system that disconnects the start condenser centrifugally. Care is needed with old, disused Debrie motors, which can get fried when the centrifugal mech jams and fails to cut out. Open the end up and make sure it’s working before running.

The question is, why was there such widespread use of fibre gears? They are in the Vox, the Bolex DA/PA, the Pax, the 17.5 Home Talkie, just to name a few I can bring instantly to mind. I have heard that fibre meshed with metal is quieter, but usually internal gear noise is the least of the problems with older projectors' general noise levels, and I am not convinced. It may have been cost, or simply fashion in what was considered good engineering practice at the time. Does anyone know?

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Heurtier Supertri Silent

Heurtier also produced a silent triple gauge machine. For some reason, one finish they used (as did Bolex) was sort of drab, olive-green and slightly wrinkled. I think it's nasty and it's a bugger to keep anything like clean. I much prefer the hammered finish shown here.

One of the first things I do with any new projector acquisition is to ensure that it's earthed. This machine, however, posed a problem. Fitting an earth lead seemed to short out the motor resistance, so that the motor raced away at full speed. This implies the case is live. However, the resistance itself was breaking up, so I fitted an electronic thingy instead, which solved the problem. I have, of course, kept the resistance, so that the machine can still be restored to original specification. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of this; don't make permanent changes, and always keep the bits you take off.

I acquired another silent (olive green) one cheap, as it kept losing the loop and this offered the opportunity for much tinkering. The natural inclination was to blame it on the claw, which had lost one of its three pins. This was corrected by a friend of a friend by brazing a new pin in place - once I had actually got the claw out.  I have rarely had a tougher battle to get inside a projector and strip it down. The mech is the almost circular construction in the picture, with the gate, claw, lens housing, gauge-change knob and two triple sprockets as a unit that can be removed as one piece.

At the back, on the same shaft as the sprockets, are two pulleys. These have to be removed, but there are no visible screws - they are hidden behind blanking plates held into a recess in the face of the pulley by a large spring clip, in the form of a nearly complete circle. One of the underlying screws has a left hand thread, to catch the unwary. They were of course seized solid, and I got them out only after a prolonged fight. Only then can the back cover be removed. There was an interesting ratchet , with a three-cornered cam, rather like a Wankel engine rotor, held in place by the screw. Small steel balls in each of the three "pockets" round the cam lock against the sides of the recess in the pulley in one direction, and freewheel in the other, and are held in place by the blanking plates.

Here the mech has been removed. In the back view of the mech, the vacant hole in the bearing is where the main claw shaft was, after being bashed out with some force.

 

These are front and back views of the lens/claw assembly. The shaft carrying the cams for the claw and cam change mechanism has been removed, but the claw itself can be clearly be seen. This assembly is fixed to the main mech by two screws hidden deep in the compartment with the springs. The wheel at the bottom is for framing. On the far left of the left-hand picture is a small brass bush. It holds a small steel ball, behind which fits a spring. The ball fits the grooves on the lens, providing for focussing. There should be a second one just below it - I had to make a new one. When I finally re-assembled the machine, I left these out and had to largely dismantle all over again.

Left is a view down into the mech. The shutter assembly, right, had to be removed before the mech would come out of the main body of the projector.

 

I felt pretty pleased with myself for managing such a complicated job, but I was quite surprised that the projector still ran. But it also continued to lose the bottom loop - the claw was not the problem. To cut a long story short, I ended up gluing two thin strips of brass to the edges of the gate so as to move it towards the claw. This seems to work fine, but it is galling that I cannot see how the problem arose in the first place The relationship between the claw and the gate is integral and it simply should not be possible for it to change. (Look at the claw/lens assembly above, front view). The spring top left holds the gate shut; the back of the gate slides into a slot running vertically behind where the spring is. See new hastily-taken pic left. I have left the gate half out and open. One of the brass strips is visible; it has the effect of pushing the gate to the right, towards the claw.

 

 

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I had another Heurtier Super-Tri silent projector in pieces (mid 2011). It had been been awaiting attention

for several years, having more or less completely seized up. It's a bugger to take apart - it seems to have been

made deliberately difficult - and at the moment I'm not at all sure I can manage to get it back together. I got

around to it because of some questions from another collector, who had bought a Heurtier Universal that, despite

good packaging, had been damaged. Part of the damage was to a double gear that drives the tripe sprockets, and it

was not at all clear how the thing was supposed to be. In fact, what we have is two thin gears (about 1/16th thick

each), possibly cut together as a single piece. These are at the end of a shaft, with no obvious indication as to

how they are held in place. My contact's gears were loose on the shaft, I had to do some dismantling to be quite

sure they were supposed to be fixed, so I thought I might as well sort the Super-Tri out and kill two birds with

one stone. It looks to me a poor piece of engineering - the gears seem to be fixed by a combination of heat-shrinking

and peening, by which I mean in this case that a pointy thing seems to have been bashed into the join between shaft

and gears to force them into each other a bit. I don't like it - seems too fragile for such a vital part. It's no doubt

due to the size restrictions imposed by the design of the triple-sprocket assembly. Again, I shall do you some pix.

 

Closer examination  suggests the fixing of the gears is less flimsy than I first thought. There

may be a "keyway", ie a slot in both gear and shaft into which a small piece of metal fits, providing positive

engagement. It must be pretty tiny, mind. Having got it the rest of the way apart, it seems obvious what the

principal cause of seizing up must have been.

 

                       

 

Pic 3 shows there are two big fat felt discs around the claw/cam area. They were bone dry and absorbed a lot of oil,

without starting to leak it out again. This seems to be an increasingly common syndrome. An old projector, maybe

unused for years, is pressed back into service and one hesitates to put too much oil in, remembering all those

injunctions in instruction books not to over-oil. So it never gets enuff oil to re-charge felt reservoirs or penetrate

fully to all the surfaces needing oil, which are anyway covered with a layer of old, dried-up gunk which has become

sticky and is certainly not doing the lubricating job it was originally applied to do. It may well be that a major

overhaul every 40 to 50 years is sensible. Another thing I found with this particular machine was that the mech as seen

in pic 4 was stiff. I wondered whether maybe fibre gears tend to grow very slightly over time, eg due to absorbing oil.

You can see in pic 4 two big screws on the side of the black plastic mount for the shutter shaft. These enable

adjustment of the meshing of the shutter shaft gear with the mech, which helped a bit. There is a further screw

on the top of the same mount, which seems to have a spring under it. Easing this a little helped even more, tho'

to be honest I'm not exactly sure what it does.

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I have had to go further into the Heurtier; here are the pix.

 

                   

 

My problem was that the claw seemed to be bent out of its correct flat shape and it had to come out for

straightening. You can see the framing mech in the first two pix; it's a ring that goes round the main claw shaft and

cam. It seems to be connected to the body only by that spring; you can see in pic two the long pivot on which

the back of the claw travels horizontally to change gauge and is moved vertically for framing by that thin serrated-

edged wheel on the outside. Note in pic 3 the different thicknesses of the claw pins; I gather it is fairly normal for

only one pin on any claw to do most of the work, with others as back-up.

 

Pix 4 & 5 show how the claw rides in its carrier. The exploded view in the final pic should help show how it all fits

together. Note in pic 4 the three pins on the circumference of the narrower part of the carrier. These engage with

a set of spiral grooves inside the black plastic gauge-change knob. The spring is placed between the narrower part of the

carrier and the knob. You have to push the carrier against the spring until the pins and grooves engage in order to

re-assemble. Needless to say, there are two wrong positions at which these can engage and only one right. The felt

pads, suitably soaked in oil, surround the claw and cam. You can see how it all slots together in some of the earlier pix.

 

The cam is made of some sort of fibre/composition material, not metal. But now look closely at the claw shuttle in

pic 3; the internal shape seems weird in the extreme and, if the cam was not fibre, you would swear it was wear.

But how could a fibre cam do that? Note that the exact position of the cam on the shaft is obviously critical, so

that when you pass the cam on its shaft thru the claw shuttle, into the bearing that is in the gauge-change knob,

it ends up in exactly the correct position for each gauge. I have had to do it by trial and error; presumably they

had a better way. There seems, incidentally, to be no way at all to remove the pulleys from the shaft, which

would have made the whole business a lot easier.

 

The last piece on the right of the exploded pic is a sort of inching knob, which also is part of the mech that locks

the knob in place for any particular gauge.

                                                      

 I am coming to the conclusion that the claw gets bent out of shape either in the

initial re-installing of the total assembly or, more likely, when trying to change gauge with the cam and claw not in

the correct alignment. The claw appears to be spring-loaded; it needs moving about before it will slide over the cam

when re-mounting the assembly. Although it can't really be seen in the pic (6 below), the triple cam has one area

where all 3 cams segments for the three gauges are at the same level, ie there is a common "flat" (in fact, rounded)

area. I am theorising that if everything is correctly aligned, when changing gauge the claw slides across the "flat"

area and so does not get bent.

 

Let me try to explain with this pic. The gauge change knob - the serrated black plastic thingy - has

slots or grooves for each gauge. Above the black knob is a spring-loaded silver knob, with a rod that

fits into these grooves, so providing positive engagement. There are also "stops" at each end of the

black knob's travel to prevent it being turned too far and causing damage. The silver knob can only

be pulled out to allow the knob to be turned to change gauge when a slot in the inching knob - in

the centre of the gauge-change knob - is next to the spring-loaded rod to enable the rod to be pulled

out. Otherwise, the inching knob fits tight up against the rod to prevent it being moved. The inching knob is held

onto the main drive shaft carrying the cam by a grub screw which tightens against a flat on the shaft, so it can only

go on in one place/position. The cam has no pre-fixed position and is simply held in place (when you find the place)

by a pair of grub screws. So my guess is that one must position the cam so that, when the inching knob is aligned to

allow the spring-loaded knob to be pulled out, the "flat" is correctly positioned. Since the claw is spring-loaded, but

not necessarily in a straight up, down, in or out position (because there are 2 springs) I now have to figure out

what the correct cam position is.

 

I think I have already got the in and out location of the cam, ie 32.25mm from the end of the shaft to the bush. I

have had problems with getting the gate to go in; this seems to be because the claw gets easily bent out of shape

and is then angled slightly out of line and so fouls the security device which ensures you can only insert the correct

gate for the gauge that has been selected (you have to remove any gate before you can change gear).

Much of this will of course be clear already to anyone who has operated a Heurtier, but I hoe that info on the way

the cam and claw inter-relate may be useful if you ever have to dismantle one. Wouldn't it be nice if we had service

manuals instead of having to try to figure it all out oneself?

 

Optical-sound-only 9.5/16 Heurtier

I bought another Heurtier on French ebay. It's an optical sound only jobbie. It came with no amp and no guarantee as to workingness and, as you can see, looking rather dirty. On arrival I found the motor worked fine in neutral, but simply would not drive the mech. As it's a condenser-start machine, one needs to be careful not to try to start it for more than a few seconds, or you risk overheating of the condenser circuit and goodbye motor. In fact, it was pretty difficult to turn over with the inching knob, and I assumed that some fibre gears in the gearbox had stripped, a problem I've met before.

 But as you can see, this was not the case. In a Heurtier, this gearbox is completely filled with grease; what you see here is after much scraping and cleaning and getting grease all over the place. However, it is interesting to note that with the gearbox free of grease and sprayed with silicone/ptfe lubricant, the motor would turn the mech. So I formulated theory No 2, which is that in a projector that is 50 years old, the grease is also 50 years old, and there is equally a 50 year accumulation of dirt, neglect and inappropriate amounts and types of lubricant etc in the entire mechanism. The grease was very dense and thick, and I had found this problem once before, when loading the gearbox with a very sticky grease had stopped the motor running properly. Incidentally, the gear layout does not seem to be the same here as in the other one I have.

Having formulated this theory, I decided that there was no alternative but to strip the moving parts quite a long way down, supported by the obvious need for cleaning. I knew this would probably invalidate the warranty, but I'm pretty adventurous, you know. In fact, as I proceeded, I found that some of the oil/grease had formed a sort of film on many of the parts, which required metal polish, much elbow grease, a toothbrush and often scraping with a screwdriver to shift. Here are some examples of just how bad it was. The picture right shows one of the triple-sprocket turrets, with the sprockets and rollers removed. The screw on the left passes thru the roller assembly and carries the loose roller seen next to it. Oddly, for such a sophisticated machine, there is no way to remove the other roller  without forcibly bending the sides until they are far enough apart to remove it. Left is a clean one. And here is one I had to bend and take apart, it was so filthy.

The little peg visible on the roller assembly rides in the curved slots in the main assembly, and the roller is pressed onto the sprocket by the little spring, which fits into the curved slot. It's easy to get the springs out, indeed, the trick is to do so without them leaping out and promptly getting lost. (Putting them back in, however, is a bit of a bugger and they can so easily go spoinging off all over the place.) All of this is very fiddly to clean, but undoubtedly the worst bit is the milled edge around the rim of the main assembly. These are cast rather then machined, I think, so are roughish and have many little places to catch dirt. There are over a million of the little grooves, and you have to go over each one several times, finally with a fingernail thru a piece of cloth, to get them anything like clean.

 Here is the side view and finally, the moment you've all been waiting for, the exploded view. It seems to me that it is not too surprising that the motor was having problems. Note the grub screw in the side of the assembly; under here are another small spring which presses on a ball bearing which protrudes slightly into the centre hole. I assume this is part of the detent mech for the rotating turret. I did remove the spiral gear on the rear part of the shaft, so I could clean under the spur gear at the other end and clean the bore itself. This is a bit tricky, as it is held on by a taper pin which passes thru one side of the gear, thru the shaft and into the other side of the gear. It needs to be knocked out with a pin punch and hammer. As it can require quite heavy blows with the hammer, it is vital to place support right under the point where you are hitting, or you will bend the shaft with, as they say, disastrous consequences.

    These are shots of the upper assembly after an awful lot of cleaning effort - I still haven't finished the lower one, which was by far the dirtier as it sits under the claw and gearbox and basically gets shat on from above all the time.

Here is a shot of the underbelly which shows the sort of state it can get into down there. Which brings me to the question of the finish on this machine. Short of soft, absorbent white, it's hard to think of a more unsuitable finish for a projector - Bolex used it as well on some models of their M8. It is almost impossible to clean. It positively attracts dirt, with all those little wrinkles. There seems to be some sort of lacquer coat as the top layer, so any solvents attack this and change the colour. Right is a picture of the cover to the gearbox; I have been experimenting to see if I can find a way. What you see here is after meths (which did dissolve the top layer and maybe more - used only on part), detergent and water, soaking overnight in petrol and finally metal degreaser, which also attacked the finish. I shall have to re-spray it now, but at least I know there is no point trying anything clever with the rest of the machine.

If you look closely at the pic, you can see round the large hole and elsewhere the remains of really caked-on deposits which build up in corners or, as here, round the rim of a cover. Even all my efforts hadn't completely shifted these.

Having finished cleaning and re-assembling the Heurtier,  it was still stiff and sometimes needing help to start, tho' it ran fine once going. All I could conclude was that wear on cam and claw meant there is a bit of play and sometimes the position of the bits is such as to create extra resistance. I have met similar on the Pathé Vox. (Still had to sort out sound, as with no amp a photocell is little use - I thought I'd have to fit a diode from an Elf. In the end I found that the amp for my magnetic Heurtier had the necessary input and power supply for a cell so it was just a matter of lashing up a connection.)

I finally overcame the starting problem by fitting a replacement motor-start condenser - it now goes like a bomb. The original was a dual 32mF in parallel, and I had a 60mF from a Heurtier that now runs with a Debrie motor. Only 3 tries and lots of work (none of it wasted, thankfully) to find the problem.

 Incidentally, I discovered that there is a removable piece on the sound drum, which has to be reversed to change between 9.5 and 16, together with the pressure roller. Always a bit of a mystery tour when you have no instructions and it ent like the one for which one does have instructions - no such thing on my Universals.

These two pictures show the removable part of the sound drum (upper right), the securing nut (upper left), and the pressure roller, (lower right). I don't got any instructions, but I figure you have to reverse the sound drum bit, and possibly the pressure roller, to change from 16mm to 9.5. The left pic is the set up for 16, and it works. Turn both round however, as in right pic, and it don't. Incidentally, the sound is read on the right in these pix.

If you look closely at the pressure roller, you can see it has four thin raised portions, or lips. Let us number these 1-4, starting from the end where three of them cluster close together With the 16mm setting, lips 3 and 4 run on the film, being about 9.5mm in width across the two lips. The raised portion on the sound drum itself runs nicely in the slot between  lips 2 and 3, which is deeper than the area between 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Clear so far?

This is the point to introduce the "O"-ring you also see in the pix. As it arrived, the pressure roller had a rotted rubber infill, standing slightly proud, in the groove formed by lips 1 and 2. I replaced it with the "O"-ring which, in the 16mm set-up, runs nicely on the outer part of the drum and keeps the roller level. Set up as in pic 2, however, you get two lips (1&2) with a total width across them of no more than 3.5mm, and a rubber ring in the groove between them, trying to stabilise the 9.5 film enough to get sound, and I am here to tell you it don't work. Nor does it work with the pressure roller the other way round - then you just get lip 3 riding on the extreme edge of the film. I can make it work by crudely using my finger as a pressure roller, but this does not seem a viable long-term approach.

I can only assume there was a separate pressure roller for 9.5, which I shall now have to make for myself. I envisage a roller with a 9.5mm wide flat to run on the film (this is what my other Universals do), a groove for the raised portion of the  drum and maybe a groove for an "O"-ring to run on the outer edge of the drum. This is basically the roller as is, except for "infilling" the area between lips 3 and 4.

If there is any helpful Continental person out there, or other idiot UK person, who knows these machines or has instructions, HELP!

Also spent a disproportionate amount of time on  the amplifier from the magnetic sound Heurtier. When tested, there was a lot of noise from the volume control, which is combined with an on/off switch. I completely failed to find a replacement - Maplin are less and less use these days as their component range shrinks - and I had no luck elsewhere. I finally had to settle for a used one with a lower ohm rating. Fitting it was a nightmare, as everything was neatly plumbed in with little slack. Got it done eventually, but could I get the amplifier to work? In the end I abandoned it, came back to it a couple of days ago, re-tested and re-wired slightly and it's fine. What I did wrong, and then did right, I know not, but I suspect it was very simple and stupid and I am well cross with myself for such incompetence.           

                               

The first five  are from Argenteuil 2009,one showing an unusual cover for the belt drive. Last two are of one of my own. For more on this machine, see Back from the Bodge.

Cinegel Royale.

This is a dual 9.6/16mm machine with 1600' spool arms. It is very cleverly designed and built. The changeover between gauges involves the usual swapping of gates and spool spindle noses, but the other two elements are unusual. Unscrewing the inching knob releases the claw (a triple, incidentally) to move in or out to for the relevant gauge, and a lever moves the sound optic from one side to the other. A single photocell has more than enough light-sensitive surface to serve both.

Another unusual feature is that the photocell feeds into a pre-amp in the base of the machine; there is no main amplifier, you have to provide your own. The two pins on the far left connect to a socket which in turn connects to the photocell. The output terminals are lower left; the red component is wired to the left one. At the right hand end are two contacts for the mains (110v) input. These also seem somehow to connect the condenser to the motor, which is condenser start, like most Heurtiers, rather than the more normal condenser run motors. Certainly, there is no other condenser. The lip of this base is only about 0.5" deep or so and it is secured to the bottom of the projector by just two small screws. These are backed up by small registration pins, an approach used elsewhere on the machine.

     The mechanism is in two main modules; this is the soundhead. In the first pic, the big hole top left is the photocell housing, the hole below it and to the right is where the flywheel roller fits. The small hole centre right takes the sprocket shaft. So, as you can see, they have solved the problem of trying to read a soundtrack on each side of a revolving flywheel roller, which is nigh impossible, by reading at a stationary part, ie the photocell cover. This has obvious dangers of scratching as film slides across metal, but I have seen this approach used elsewhere, eg the GB L516. The film comes from the right, thru the three small rollers, round the outside of the photocell housing and the outside of the roller bottom left. This does not, as you might expect, actually ride on the flywheel roller. Instead, it is mounted on an arm pivoted just below the photocell housing. In the rear view, you can see this pivot far right. It connects to another arm which is damped by a spring and by a plunger in that round pot which is presumably meant to be filled with oil. You can also see in this rear view the two pins top right where the photocell fits and the roller bearing for the sprocket shaft. A clever set-up; I shall be interested to see how it works.

                  

The other main module includes the claw mechanism, a neat barrel shutter and all the necessary gearing. Pic 3 shows the central oiling system in a view from above, pic 4 is from above looking forward.

     Finally, here is the carcase of the machine as stripped down, but with the pre-amp module in the base in  position. The whole machine needs a good clean and all the rollers freeing and re-oiling. The claw changeover mechanism needed freeing, and the damper pot in the soundhead module was locked solid. You can see in pic 2 the three controls; the central pushbutton starts the motor. Volume control for the pre-amp is the edge wheel under the base, below the switches. Some way to go yet and, of course, I have no idea if the pre-amp will work. More when it's finished.   

I forgot all about this piece when I'd finished, and started afresh. Too lazy to amalgamate so follow this link: Royale2         

 

Cinegel Silent

Did you ever have one of those days? There was I, innocently trying to run a bit of 9.5 I'd just checked, repaired and cleaned. I thought, "What a good opportunity to try out that little Cinegel". So I did; all well, quite a bright pic I thought from the 250v 300w A1/37, tho' the projection lens leaves a bit to be desired tho' of course nothing else will actually fit. Then a sudden clonk. Funny, I thought. Stopped (First Commandment) and checked. Projector turning over OK, concluded I had joggled the projector (I was tensioning the feed reel by hand). Tried again, OK for a moment or two then big clonk and projector stops.

           

Nothing for it now but to take it apart. Above are the projector, then a naked rear view with the lamp housing detached, then a close-up of the claw mechanism (which looks quite a bit like a Vox claw). What had happened was that part of the condenser lens, ie one of the two elements, and the spring separating them, had fallen out into the mech. They were supposed to be held in place by a circlip affair, ie a springy bit of wire in a ring bigger than the hole, squashed to fit and so grip. Clear? The circlip was still in place, it was just not doing its job. How or why I know not, but the missing bits were still able to fall out when I re-fitted them.

So, into my trusty gander bag to find something to replace it. Remember one should never throw anything away (Second Commandment) ? Well, I keep all sorts, and found an odd bit of spring wire that turned out to be just right when bent to shape. That was the easy part. When I put the machine back together, narrowly avoiding forgetting to re-fit the drive pulley and belt, came to put the lamp back in and it wouldn't fit. I'd put the back element of the condenser in the wrong way round and it was fouling the lamp. Open it all up again, re-fit lens, then spot that I had broken off one of the lamp wires in all my fiddling. Re-solder, struggle to re-align lamp. Other end of wire breaks off. When I finally get it all back together ready to test, I found that, this time, I had not managed to avoid missing off the main pulley and belt. By the time I finally got it all working, I was a bit peeved. Not one of my better days.

This is an entirely different kind of Cinegel silent 9.5, kindly donated by David Whistler, and a Cinegel model 220.

      

 

 

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