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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.

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.

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 is 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.

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