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Author
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Topic: My Great Worm-Glop Weekend!
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted November 14, 2014 03:29 PM
So I had an adventure about a week ago when I was running a film on my Elmo ST-800: every couple of seconds the sound took a nasty dip in pitch.
We’ve all had times like this: when your car starts making a funny vibration, when your girlfriend stops laughing at your jokes, that you know something is wrong but you just can't face it. You blame something, anything else for your problem:
“It’s just the road surface”
“She’s just a little tired from her job”
-rather than face facts that the problem is real, and so are the consequences!
This is NOT denial! (-or IS it?)
In this case I blamed the newly acquired print I was projecting, rather than face having an ailing projector. Since the next film I played was fine I thought I’d been proven right.
(Until the next time…)
The next night I started a known good print and it was even worse: reality smacked me hard in the face. “What is it? Belts? Motor? Power board? I have no TIME to mess with this right now!”
-but all of a sudden, mid-reel it smoothed out and I thought “ST-1200HD!!”
-You see the ST-1200 has a reputation for operating slowly at first and I have one of them too. I’ve been living with running it a couple of minutes from cold for a while to get it up to speed, yet now my ST-800 was doing something similar!
There has been quite a bit of talk about lubrication fixing issues like these, but I’ve never gotten a single definitive answer on what to use, so I’ve put off dealing with it. When you look into it, you find all sorts of alternatives and people swearing up and down that they will either totally destroy the machine or make it better than new. You go out on the 'net in general and it's no better.
-it was now time to find out for certain.
I wrote to a couple of people who repair a lot more projectors than I do and Richard Patchett wrote back that he uses Super Lube when he does projector repairs. I looked it up: It’s among few lubes that specifically states it’s safe with nylon and other plastics. It was available at a local hardware store so I went and grabbed some. (I actually bought it…they don’t let you have films in jail.)
I looked through the gear train on the ST-800. The worst possible point in terms of friction is the worm gear, because two surfaces are continuously sliding on each other at the rotational speed of the worm. So I went at this first. I grabbed a toothpick at the Diner that morning, brought it home and slowly rotated the gear train and dug the old “lube” from within the little valley that spirals around the worm gear.
I call this “lube” because there was a lot more in there than any kind of grease or oil. It was this thick, revolting, contaminated...glop. (-as if the creature from the black lagoon blew his nose!). I’m sure there was dust and film emulsion and who knows what else in there. (There was even some hair! Don’t ask me: I still have all mine!) I just kept doing it until I reached the bottom of the groove and I wasn't wiping worm-glop off the toothpick anymore.
I applied the Super Lube to the worm with a clean fingertip and let it run in a few minutes. I let the machine cool off a few hours to make the experiment real, tried a film and all was well!
I knew from Frank Arnstein that the cam tank lube is another major friction point, so I cleaned out in there and lubed that too. (So much the better.)
The good news is I’ve run every night this week and the ST-800 is still doing fine.
The better news is immediately after I lubed the ST-800 I did the ST-1200HD too.
This machine from the moment I got it has been sluggish when started from cold. The first ten seconds or so the beam is noticeably flickery and for the first three to five minutes the sound is very bassy: music is all minor key, actresses sound disturbingly masculine. There is a little repeating chirp the first 30 seconds which I believe was the drive roller slipping on the shutter wheel. The solution up until now has been turning on the machine with the lamp while I gather prints. Even then it could still be a little slow.
These last few days I’ve been starting it directly from cold and it’s up to sound speed in roughly the time it takes to thread up.
-this is major progress!
Super Lube is excellent for this purpose. It is very gelatinous, so it stays where you put it. The idea of a lube spreading out through the machine and splattering where you don’t want it (optics, film path…) is troubling: no problem here.
I want to run a small commercial for Mr. Patchett to thank him for his help: he sells Super Lube on his website and if you aren’t in a position to go out and find it locally or you just want to help out a fellow film-friend, please order it from him:
Super Lube at RC's Classic 16mm
At the end of the day the nice thing about this is it’s not hard to do, so I will make it like an annual maintenance step. I also think the next few times I clip off the end of Ty-Wraps I’ll save that nice, thin, non-abrasive, sharp piece. It will be a better glop digger than that comparatively blunt toothpick.
I have no reason to believe this is only an Elmo thing either. The next time you have the back off any machine you own please give this a try.
-Only YOU can prevent Worm Glop!!
[ August 31, 2015, 02:39 PM: Message edited by: Steve Klare ]
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted November 14, 2014 08:56 PM
Andrew,
We live in an imperfect world and everything is compromise. An AC motor is simple, efficient, fixed speed and pretty rugged. If you could make a 24 FPS only projector you could belt it or gear it and life would be good.
-but...
We need to run machines at two different frame rates with two different line frequencies so now your belt or gears become a variable speed transmission, and simplicity goes out the window.
Elmo gave us two wheels rolling on their circumferences, Eumig gave us a ball and a wheel with the ball rolling on the side of the wheel.
-neither has aged well.
As far as I know, the main transport drive of the GS-1200 is exactly the same as the DC driven GS-800, ST-800, ST-600 and ST-180 (theory of operation if not the exact components). I think where the GS separates itself is the auxiliary motors for the arms. (I'll be sure if I ever take one apart...)
-but this is still a thread about the value of de-glopping the worm. I'm so pleased with this I'm saying even if you don't have problems like these you should crack them open and do this: if nothing else it will reduce the strain on your motor and supporting electronics. As I said: it's easy. So why not?
If your neighbors have a long abandoned projector in their attic, wait until they are away, break in and do this fix! (maybe steal their jewelry as cover...)
Someday they'll thank you! (or maybe not...) ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Gary Crawford
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 979
From: Manassas, VA. USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted November 19, 2014 07:32 AM
Also Steve Osborne of The Reel Image sells what he calls Moly Lube....probably the same kind of stuff. I've used that on my machines with good success. On the rubber on the shutter wheel of the St1200HD. I once bought a machine cheap on ebay. All rubber was looking more like Super Lube, than rubber...including the rubber on the shutter wheel. It took me a few days, but I got all the belt glop out of the machine and all the rubber off the wheel. I was concerned that with no rubber on there, it would be a non operational machine. I was wrong. It turned out to be in perfect running shape...with the steadiest picture and best sound of all the hd's in my arsenal. It now is one of the two permanent St1200HD machines in my booth at home. It makes a slight bit more noise than the others.(the rubber on the wheel dampens the sound somewhat), but it comes up to speed ...picture steady...and if there is a change in running speed(and pitch of sound) due to the small reduction in the diameter of the shutter wheel, I have not noticed it But that kind of lube is good stuff and thank you, Steve, for another nice, informative and witty contribution to us collectors.
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