Takeup reel stops everytime Elmo GS1200MK3

[Matthieu van der Sluis]

Yesterday I was watching Block Heads (really funny film) on my Elmo GS1200MK3.
When the second reel finished half the film was leyimg on the floor.
With reel 3 the same thing.
Today it stops almost after a few meters.
i did notice that the filmsound was sometimes a bit too slow, but not always the same.
if I start the projector just before I put in the film, I hear its sound is not consistant.
Is this just a maitenance issue?
is there a belt in it the take up arm?

Van Eck doesn't do repairs anymore, so I have nowhere to go.

[Steve Lee]

Hi Matthieu.
The problem is likely to be the take-up motor gear.


This is a common problem with the GS. Van Eck still produces these gears and it is a pretty simple job to replace them.

https://van-eck.net/en/product/elmo-...20301-pp-0036/

Steve.

[Matthieu van der Sluis]

Okay thanks.
Do I need to go into the back of the projector, or can I just open the arms.

[Matthieu van der Sluis]

If I understand this photo, I many tiny things I must disassemble.
it scares me a lot.

[David Hardy]

If I understand this photo, I many tiny things I must disassemble.
it scares me a lot.

Matthieu ... I agree ! One reason i grew to dislike using this overpriced and overhyped Elmo GS 1200's projectors and sold mine . Very over engineered with tiny , fiddly bits that were quite unnecessary and not very hands on for the average user when it comes to maintenance and servicing . In my opinion a poor design alongside all the plasticy bits in the very important part namely the film path which would wear out and damage your valuable prints if the user was not vigilant enough .

[Thomas Knappstein]

One Problem of this getting old machines are the Carbon Brushes. Every Motor in the GS1200 has Carbon Brushes. So the Take up and Rewinding Motors too. This Carbon Material is getting greasy over the 4 Decades since Production. I have 5 GS Machines in use and all of them had this Problem. Cleaning at all inside the Motor and put in new Brushes give the Motors a new Lifetime. A Problem are the Motors of the very last MK3 Machines. They have Motors where you can´t change the Brushes easy. But I think there is a Way to do this.

[Matthieu van der Sluis]

Now my Elmo also sounds variable in speeds, like it wants to slow down.
That is not takeup motor causing this, is it.
Last time it looked bad and it looked going out completely, also the light
i shut down the projector and started up,... it worked again.
is this prpjector going end of life?
I thought I had bought a nice clean machine.

I have a lot of 360 reels and my ST1200 has never windup a big reel proparly since the beginning.

[Melvin England]

Matthieu - I have had a similar problem recently which I brought to everyone's attention. If you look at my recent posting entitled "GS1200. The Rear Arm is Very Slow" I got some wonderful advice and a "how to do it" video from Graham Ritchie. Maybe it could help you, too. It's worth a look.

[Matthieu van der Sluis]

I'll do that

[Matthieu van der Sluis]

To complete this topic,...

I have my Elmo GS1200MKIII repaired by
Digital Super8 in Venray Neterlands.
My take-up motor was defect and he fixed it.

He not only cleaned the whole machine and got rid of old grease and oiled and greased it again.
He also swapped old cheap electronics for new modern ones, like relais, cleaned the prints, pots, soundhead, all filmpads and everything, including recordings.
Did final finetunings to make it as flicker free as possible.
The machine is like new again and I can thouch all knobs without being afraid of strange noises.

patrick knows what he's doing and really love doing it.
He works on it in his spare-time as a fun hobby and just counts the minutes he's actually working on it.
At the end it was just a few hours.
I'm so glad I found him.

If you need to contact him for repairs,...
You can send him an E-mail: digitalsuper8@gmail.com
He does reparations for Elmo and Bauer Super8 projectos.

[Paul Adsett]

Matthieu, glad to hear that your GS1200 is running like new again. I just had the same problem that you encountered. I was running an 800ft reel of film and when I walked back to the projector at the end of the film, I was horrified to see a pile of film on the floor! Fortunately I was able to get the film manually rolled back onto the reel. I have had this problem before, and in both cases it turned out to be a fault with the large Panasonic relay, located on the main circuit board, I have replaced that relay with a new one and the projector is now working fine.
I agree with David that the GS1200 is over engineered, particularly so for most of us who are not using them for laying down soundtracks or synching up to DVD's. However there is little doubt that when all is well with these machines they perform brilliantly, and the build quality is just like a 16mm machine. Their huge advantage is that the sound heads never seem to wear out (which is probably true for all the Elmo S8 sound projectors).

[Graham Sinden]

Paul can I ask what make and part the new relay was? I still have a faulty relay in one of my GS1200's which I know is faulty as if I push the side of it, it starts working.

Graham S

[Paul Adsett]

Hi Graham.
Here is the part number of the large relay on the main circuit board of the GS1200, which controls power to the rear take-up motor:

Panasonic NC4D-P-DC12V

I get mine from Digikey Electronics here in the USA

https://www.digikey.com/?gclsrc=aw.d...m_medium=cpc&u

They also stock the small relay which controls the front arm rewind/reverse motor:
Panasonic NC2D-P-DC12V

I think VAN ECK also stocks both these relays
Note that these relays are sometimes listed as Matsushita relays, but Matsushita and Panasonic are the same company.

My experience on my GS1200'S is that both these relays need to be replaced every few years ( 5 to 10 years or so). This has always been the solution on my machines for fixing the take up motor not running, or the front rewind/reverse motor not running. The symptoms are exactly as you describe - tapping on the relay will sometimes get it working again for a while. In your case. you say that pushing on the relay gets it to work, so that might be a poor solder joint on one of the pins so you could try reheating the pins. Probably not though, replacement is the way to nail the problem.

You will need to entirely remove the main circuit board to gain sufficient access to these relays for replacement. The pins on the relay are very close together so you need to find an experienced solder guy who can remove and re-solder the relays without ruining the PC board. I am a very poor solderer and did not even attempt this procedure. Fortumately I have a MIL-SPEC certified solder guy from Lockheed Martin close by.

[Graham Sinden]

Thanks Paul, great help .

I will try to order them from here in the UK.

Graham S

[Graham Ritchie]

My spare GS1200 does the same thing prodding one of the two relay brings things back to life, for a while, there was a point that was no longer doing the trick. I did try to re-solder things but that didn't work. Changing both of them is the only way to go. In saying that as Paul stated, make sure that you are good with a soldering iron, I am not, so later when I get them I will find someone who is to change both of them. you don't want to make a mess on that board, in my case that is exactly what would happen if I tried