Various 16

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VARIOUS 16MM PROJECTORS

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Ampro, Debrie, Danson, Bauer, Victor and GBL 516, Early SOF, Kinox (and B&H 173, Buisse Botazzi),

PHILLIPS

At Ealing September 2009, I picked up a LH drive Phillips intermittent sprocket 16mm machine. I have played with one of these at the PPT in Bletchley; it has the distinction of being the only machine I have yet met where threading is non-intuitive and just has to be known. This is because it has an arrangement whereby the gate is opened along with the film path by a single lever and, once threaded, closing up the lever makes the loops.

This machine has obviously had a lot done to it electrically/electronically. From the rear view, it appears that there was at one time an even bigger motor, and possibly a different lamphouse. The tranny, about the biggest and heaviest I have seen, may well have been designed to power a 110v 1200w incandescent lamp. The amp has disappeared, and in its place are most of the electrics of an Elf - tranny and amp, including the power for the 24v 250w lamp now fitted.. The fixed wire emerging from the left of the external tranny is actually a mains feed (off the back of the mains input socket to the tranny) to the Elf bits. So it appears that all that huge tranny is doing is supplying 110v to the motor. Overkill, perhaps? The empty socket on the left of the big tranny may have been a separate feed to the original amp - there is a matching affair on the rear of the machine base. The LH input on the rear of the proj (now the mains feed to the Elf stuff) may have been an amp output. Trouble is, all this is speculation, as I have no documentation at all - anything would be welcome.

I don't know why it seems to be a point of pride with so many that all projectors should be as dirty and unkempt as possible, combining both under and over-oiling in a single neat package, tho' to be fair this has an oil bath, which are notoriously leaky things. It may be in the course of my extensive cleaning that the cell seen in the final pic got damaged, or it may already have been busted - hard to say. The corner with the output leads is cracked almost off, so I shall have to replace. Incidentally, the insulation of the original cable used for the mains feed from the tranny to the Elf parts was rotten and just crumbling off where it was connected, inside the tranny casing. It was an absolute b******* to get inside and work on to replace it.

EARLY SOUND-ON-FILM

Here are some of the very first sound-on-film narrow gauge machines, dating from around1933.

KINOX

I have a 35mm hand-cranked Kinox 35mm, which I will photograph some day. Zeiss also apparently did 16mm under the Kinox label. There is an obvious resemblance between these two and my Zeiss Ikon.

Found this one on French ebay. Make is stated as Buisse-Botazzi. It's most unusual feature is that huge spool capacity. I wonder if you had to nail the back end down?

Posh Projector for Posh People

By the time projectors get to this sort of size and sophistication, my interest is very much on the wane - not really suitable for a bit of fun showing a few reels to a few friends, more high-brow serious. Never really quite understood the point of these. They would never face the sort of daily bashing 35mm machines got, and all this clever advanced engineering has still only a 16mm frame and sound track to work with. What minor increments in performance could be achieved would be totally lost on audiences, anyway. Arm-and-a-leg jobbie, too, I suppose. Pass.

Here is a cheaper Bauer I have been fiddling with. The blue is to blot out the unsightly mess that is the normal backdrop in my workshop; you may think this particular colour is a high price to pay. I have no real info on this machine - if anyone has any manuals etc I would love to see/scan. Ha! Have now found website, in German but lovely pix.

http://www.olafs-16mm-kino.de:80/

The problem with this particular machine is that it has no mains lead and an unusual 3 pin receptacle. The wiring inside is not that clear as to which goes where and it trips the switch at the distribution board when I even plug it in (said board is luckily right behind me as I work). Also it needs toothed belts to drive the top sprocket and on to the take-up. One is 5mm pitch, which is not that unusual, and 15cm circumference, which is. The other is 6mm pitch, which is way away from standard, and 30cm long.

You will see I have unhooked two capacitors - they sit on top of the motor, and this was the only way to get round the back to the input socket - still v. tight tho'. The motor and the duct thing at the back should come out as a unit, but someone has clearly tried and failed at this before - one of the 3 quite small Allen-head bolts that fix the front of the motor to that big butch ally bracket has had it's socket rounded so the key won't hold, and it is of course so awkwardly located that no other way of getting at seems feasible so far.

Points to note are the spool arms, which both fold backwards to lie flat on top of the machine - dunno why - just because they could, I guess. The front end is very Siemens-ish - didn't Bauer take over Siemens? Just as with Siemens, there was this machine, with in-built transistor amp, and others with a separate valve amp.

If you look closely at the pic of the back, you can just see 2 of the 3 Allen-head bolts, the third being at the back, hidden by the belt. The thing on the right with Mains 240 Volts Lamp written on it seems, from the very limited info I have, to be a shorting plug. It pulls out vertically from a plug at the base, which has four pins. The tiny bit of red wire you can see about a third of the way up this plug is a replacement that I fitted. It connects all four pins. I had to replace it because the plug is a poor design. The screw visible at the end of the red wire holds the bare wire down just with its head - no washer - and the wire goes across to a second pin where the same happens. A mirror arrangement is at the back of the plug for the other two pins, all connected by this one piece of wire. At the front, not only was the wire too short - I suspect a break at some time - and this had caused sparking at one pin, evidenced by black deposits at the point of contact. The same had happened at the other pin, simply because the way of securing the wire is so poor and the screw had worked a bit loose. This may - only may - have some link to the problems I'm having.

After consulting with Bryan Pearce, Bauer user, we concluded that one of the three wires to the (metal) receptacle was probably spare in a 240v model, and that the ground connection was via the receptacle itself. Wiring on that basis seems to work - so far.

A kind person on 8mm Forum has given me the address of a website where one can buy Bauer belts, also for various other German machines. Mostly in German I'm afraid and prices are high - 40 euros for the short belt and 30 for the large. It's www.wittner-cinetec.com.

First is a Kodak Pageant, fairly rare in the UK, tho' Group 9.5 mag for Summer 2010 shows one converted to 9.5. This is a pic from an instruction leaflet, not the real thing.

Second is a Kalee, which I always thought were 35mm only.

I wouldn't call the third pic one of the triumphs of advertising - just a boring black box. Weird.

Pic 4: even Fumeo had to start somewhere, I suppose.

The Ericsson in 5&6has an odd design which would seem to preclude the use of large reels. The photo is a pic which looked like the Ericsson on ebay. I wonder if those spool arms are additions for bigger spools?

I've found some pix on file that I don't think I have yet shared with you.

This is a Kodak 16/20, loaned by Pat Moules. It's in virtually mint, unused condition and, for a marvel, so is the box - these so rarely survive in really good condition.