Wolverine Motor Stuttering/Grinding

[Lincoln Thorn]

Hi friends!

I've been messing with the Wolverine Pro the last couple weeks with home movie digitization and small digest reels.

It's recently been making grinding noises from what sounds like the motor befor an error message pops up that stops the digitization process.

I was hoping someone here could offer advice on fixing this issue!

Thanks.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Lincoln,
A few more detail would help:
- Does grinding noise happens with no film loaded
- What des the display show
- A machine gun noise is usually caused by the tight film in the gate or a splice (stepper skipping) -- try the paper trick
https://www.wolverinedata.com/assets..._Film_test.pdf

[Lincoln Thorn]

Glad to offer more details:
It seems to be from the mechanism that pulls the film by the film perforations. It will lock up and grind until the machine automatically shuts down the process.


I tried it with and with our film and it happens in each case!

[Stan Jelavic]

A few more questions:
- is the noise always at the same spot of the claw travel?
- is it repetitive i.e. does the transport ever continue after the noise is heard?
- is it like a stuttering noise?
- does it happen with film out and gate open?

Several potential causes:
- loose connection to the stepper
- bad solder in the stepper motor (fixed a few like that)
- dirt inside the transport
- worn out transport gears
- worn out transport gear bushing allowing too much play and eventual jam
- physical damage to the unit
- issues with the power supply (that is where the stepper driver resides)
- bad connection at the 20 pin ribbon running from controller to the power supply
- dc adapter issues

[Kim Trampus]

It's a shame that those Wolverines aren't made with better quality components. There are plenty of prosumers that would pay more for a higher quality step time video transfer with a better hd camera. Kickstarter project anyone?

[Stan Jelavic]

Definitely they could have done a better job with the camera selection. They picked up the old dashcam which is not adequate for the task And then the quality is not that great. Here are some issues that I worked on.
https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/vbb/f...sues#post83787