Eiki SNT-0 dissintegrated rubber

[Sam Braverman]

Hi everyone!

As part of an upcoming exhibition, our audio-visual tech team recently took out some old dinosaurs from the depths of our warehouse.
These projectors are ancient and have not been conserved other than sitting in a dry shelf for a good 20-30 years. Thus there are some issues to figure out.

For those interested in the details - one of said projectors (Elmo 16-A) needs an oil refill for the oil bath, I've been researching exactly which oil it needs you can see more in my post history.

But that's beside the point of this thread, for our current challenge, we're trying to fix up our Eiki SNT-0 (image 1).
One of the rubber parts has disintegrated over the years (image 2). I believe this rubber is supposed to be used for the gears that spin the film that has already been projected, in order to collect it. (excuse my newbie terminology, look at image 3)
We have been looking online for the exact rubber but with no luck, so our plan is to make our own. We bought some special gripped rubber with about the same diameter. Supposedly it's good for these types of mechanical uses (image 4). Using a cutter and soldering iron (cut, melt, and connect), we're going to attempt to replicate the original rubber.

If anyone has any tips for us, it would be great help, whether it's where we could find the original rubber, or comments on our plan to replicate it. As you can can probably tell, we are not experts in this field and are researching as we work on this, so any info would be great help!

Thanks for reading,
Sam

Image 1: Eiki SNT-0



Image 2: The old rubber



Image 3: in yellow is where the rubber should be




Image 4: The new tubber we bought

[Martin Davey]

Ebay has many sellers with sets of belts for many elf/ eiki projectors, from out side your country. Even so if the machine has not been turned on for 30 years they may well have many other issues to deal with, and probably needs a good service.

[Lindsay Morris]

That belt is for Rewind and IF you do not need it as you have other means to rewind your film then IF Not then that fuse together stuff is VG.

I do not bother purchasing belts like that as I use the same stuff you have purchased to make my own fo any size by fusing it together.

Wrap the material around the two pulleys so it is snug into the pulleys and mark the belting where the two ends meet and then carefully cut it dead square with a box cutter making it about 2mm shorter. That ensures the belt has a good grip onto the pulleys.

A good HOT soldering iron is needed but it must have 2 flats filed onto either side so that the belting ends can be pushed up against the iron and begin to melt allowing a bead of molten material to form on each face of the iron.
Once those beads form remove the belting from the heat and gently press together (not overly tight though as doing that tends to weaken the join) with your fingers and blow on it to make it cool rapidly and once cooled trim the lump formed by the two beads with either a sharp box cutter or by carefully grinding it off on a grinder wheel..Do that gently as you do NOT want to heat the material too much.

If you have made a good joint it will NOT be possible to pull it apart.

An old 100Watt Birko or similar iron is best as they have a large copper tip approx 7/16" in diameter on which it is easy to file the two flat faces on the side of the tip.
Sometimes the belting suppliers will have the correct heating tool and can fuse together your belt once its cut to the correct length.

Some of that fuseable belting becomes brittle with age and will suddenly disintergrate when you least expect it but most belts I have made up have lasted years before they fall apart.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

That missing "belt" is used only in reverse projection - therefore NOT absolutely necessary for normal forward projection.

And since it's not a dimensionally critical part, an o-ring of approximate size will get the job done if necessary. That's how I got my NT-2's replacement belt - via an online hardware store.

[Sam Braverman]

Thank you so much everybody! Will update on the process.

[Dominique De Bast]

Hello Sam. Hope you will post some pictures of the projectors in the exhibition 🙂