Homemade Telecine

[David Brown]

Good to know about the diffuser.

In an earlier gate design, I made a dovetail slot for a mask on the bottom. With small parts, cleaning up support structures can be difficult. In this case I split the part into two pieces. Then both can be printed (flat side down) without supports. I also changed the dovetail to a square slot since the mask can be held in place by the bottom half.

To illustrate that. The mannequin's arm is supported, the different color highlights the supports.


Makes me wonder what commercial printers do to remove structures from tiny places. I know there is water soluble filament that can be used with a two headed printer. Just soak the part in water and the supporting structures melt. That would be great!


I'll download the updates. No way do download the whole folder at once?

[Stan Jelavic]

The diffuser is just a rectangular piece of thin plastic so I am not sure if the arrangement that you have will work well with that. Would be good to have a thin diffuser carrier with a recessed opening for the thin diffuser. The recessed window should be wider than the gate opening. I will sketch it tonight.
Are you having problems printing these tiny parts out?

Here is what I thought. A thin piece of opaque white plastic sandwiched between the gate bottom parts.

[David Brown]

I have printed the parts. Today I'm measuring the printed parts against the designed dimensions. The only part that has a problem is the shaft. It easily breaks when trying to cleanup with sandpaper or a file. I found a 1.5"L finishing nail, 1.6 mm dia. works really well.

I've decided to make any changes in Spark, so it's has been a slow start. Pretty much like Fusion360, but just enough different or else I'd be done. Still it will be faster to just modify and not recreate these in Fusion.

Isn't the Gate mounted onto the LED_housing? That would hold the plastic in place. I'm still using 1/8" white (acrylic I think) that years ago came 8"x10". It defuses well while passing most of the lumenence.

[Stan Jelavic]

Good work David. I sent you several steel shafts yesterday. Should get them within a few days. You are right, the diffuser can be held in place sandwiched between the gate and the LED housing. Do you have the part number for the diffuser?

[David Brown]

It was at least 6 years ago since I bought the plastic and no evidence on Amazon or Ebay. I do remember It was shipped from somewhere.

This looks similar. Looks like it could be 50% translucent also.

Amazon Mine

https://www.amazon.com/SIBE-R-PLASTI...G%2CB07MG8KTBX

An assembly of what I have in the link below. I used 2" finishing nails, just over 2mm dia.. A spring I had that fits under tension. I have removed, but not printed, 1.5 mm from the width of the roller-bracket. The rocker doesn't easily move side to side while under tension.
If you sent a spring, I'll see. Otherwise, I can't say if my spring is strong enough. Very handy to lift the rocker off the motor by the nail.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17rT...ew?usp=sharing

LOL, I was about to ask how this mounts to the board when I realized, there is a stepper_bracket. Probably since I have two of mine on the bench, it wasn't printed. Here it is with my bracket for now.

[Stan Jelavic]

Wow that looks pretty impressive David. Great work. I have not sent you the spring. I have an assortment of them here but will need the actual assembly in order to be able to figure out which one to use.
The rollers turned out very good in the picture that you posted. I sent you a few complete rollers and a few rubber parts. The rubber parts are flexible enough and can slip over your rollers.
Once you get the parts you can actually run the setup with the Hawkeye board and the test FW.
I will redesign the Hawkeye board so that it will not require any of the Wolverine components. That is the next item on my agenda.

[David Brown]

I have the rollers and rods. They are smaller than they looked in the pictures!

I planned to use the Winait power and board to power the motor. That way I can test the "strength" of the pinch and any wobble.

The Hawkeye board I have, is Ver. 6, maybe that will work?

I've been printing revisions, but now the printer head keeps shutting off. Tracked it to a loose wire. I just tried to print while watching the temperature. When it starts dropping, I wiggle the wire. I lost eventually!

A new part is comming Friday or Saturday. It's a quick fix with the part in hand.

I put the rollers on the older print and threaded some film. Snug, but the film slips when pulled. Just a small helping finger adds a little more tension and the film grabs enough to spin the motor when pulled. So a stronger spring than I used might be needed.

I have more springs!

[Stan Jelavic]

Very nice David. The V6 version of the board can drive the stepper but it does not have the camera trigger i.e. the camera trigger is not routed through the MSP430. It is possible to solder a very fine wire to one of the unused MSP pins and add your own trigger cct and run the custom MSP FW. Will send you the details.

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is the camera trigger mod for the Hawkeye-V6 David. A small board has to be added with the camera trigger. Can put it together for you.

The input to the trigger board is from the MSP pin12 which is unused on the V6 board.
The output of the trigger board is the camera trigger connector that has to be plugged into the camera.
I assume you have the UX226 or was it the BUC02.
The fw is posted in github.
https://github.com/vintagefilmography/homemade-telecine

It is in the MSP directory. The project name is:
freq_gen_12_homemade_pinch

After downloading and unzipping the file, you will have to use the Code Composer File->Switch Workspace to point to the new workspace.

[David Brown]

Thanks Stan, and Happy Thanksgiving!

I will look at this, probably not tomorrow.

[Stan Jelavic]

Thanks David, Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. I will slowly start with the new board design. That one will work with the new stepper controller and will have its own power supply - no Wolverine components.

[David Brown]

Printer is back online tonight! Yesterday I fiddled with the pinch roller. Removed the tension spring and added a compression spring. These springs are right out of the box of springs from Home Depot. The plastic post it is sitting on is one of Kamel's pulley supports.



The spring is not mounted, just sitting on top of the rocker all the way to the right. There it has the least pressure. Using the Winait board, the motor pulls from the supply reel while I hand rewind. There is more than enough traction here. Later I added the takeup motor from the Winait. It cannot keep up with the pinch roller feed! It was just a test.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yTn...ew?usp=sharing

I will be testing the printer next, back to the parts. I still need to flash the Msp430. I believe it already has V12, probably one before V12hdr. I was about to give it a try when I realized it will need some plugs and switches to get it to run at all. This board has no camera, but it could do the transport.

I'm not touching my Hawkeye. It still works.

Maybe the Non-Wolverine version you are creating would be a better setup for me. Certainly the hires stepping sounds good.

[Stan Jelavic]

Looks pretty impressive David. The compression spring is a good idea. The expansion spring may also work with the new gate if the gate spring pressure is set properly. Still to be seen. I am working on the new non Wolverine Hawkeye board. Will support the 12V input, same as Wolverine and actually the Wolverine AC adapter can be used with it. The only other additional component is the stepper controller.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I could still leave the Wolverine type connector there so that the Wolverine power supply / stepper controller can be used but that one takes more time to put together and it is pretty fiddly and sometimes causes connection issues.

[Stan Jelavic]

Completed the controller board design. It will still support Wolverine power supply / stepper controller but alternatively an off the shelf controller can be used without any Wolverine components. Will order the PCBs within a day or so.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hawkeye II functionality:
- can be used with the Wolverine power supply which includes the stepper controller
- alternatively used with MicroStep Driver https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075HBJP51/
- provision for AC adapter input if Wolverine power supply not used
- uses PCB screw terminal blocks to interface with the stepper controller, switches and LED

Switches:
RUN - turn Hawkey II on and off
SPEED - slow speed for HDR, fast speed for non HDR
ALIGN - very slow stepper speed for frame alignment
FAN - turn fan on if Wolverine power supply used
REW - turns takeup on
REV - reverses takeup motor rotation
DIR - reverses stepper direction possibly used for frame alignment

The boards are on order and I should have one boards ready for David within a few weeks.