Kodascope L   

At the last Ealing Fair, I bought a Kodascope L. Now, as you may recall, I don't much like Kodak machines, but this one was in lovely condition (with a nice box) and looked as though it had hardly been used. And indeed, it quite obviously not been used for a long time as the motor was seized up solid and the mech was pretty stiff and the belts were pretty trashed. That's caveated this emptor well and truly.  We live and re-learn. Now, a projector that ent bin used for possibly decades needs oil, and not just the occasional dribble as per handbook. In all that time, oil and bearings and felt pads and oiling systems will have dried out and need replenishing before any oil gets to where it is actually needed. But none of that worked and I had to face a fairly extensive dismantling to get to the seat of the trouble. Naturally, I thought of you lot out there and took some pix for you.

          

Here are views of the machine with the major covers removed. Note the separate fan (the machine is designed for lamps up to 750w) and the fact that the motor speed control has to be unscrewed to get the back off. The claw mech (Pic3) seems very compact; there is a very small cam behind the front pivot.


In order to get at the motor, I had to unscrew the mains input plug, the motor and lamp switches and of course the securing bolts coming up from below. Then came the really nasty bit. On top of the motor sits a bracket with guide holes for the tubes of the oiling system. Four tubes come down from the main (felt-filled) reservoir above the top sprocket. They pass into the bracket then onwards into extension tubes with weird bends to the two motor bearings and the fan ditto. Not too hard to take apart but it's going to be a nightmare to put back - there is very restricted space in which to work.

               

So here we see the motor successfully(?) removed along with the switches and mains socket. This, incidentally, is a right-angled jobbie, with two pins at the back for (presumably) mains input (110v as it's American) and a socket to the front. Better not get things the wrong way round and end up with two live pins. The motor, naturally, turns out to be one of those internal-brush types, shown in Pix 2 & 3. Not only is it impossible to change brushes without dismantling the motor, but the brush springs are loose and held in place by the respective wires, stiffened with solder, passing thru holes in the brush channels. I hate this system. Worst of all, you can only access the other end of the motor by removing the brushes,springs and wires, then the frame on which they are mounted so as finally to be able to release the through bolts holding the cap on. Guess which end the root of the trouble was?


I found that the bearing at this other end of the motor was seized almost solid onto the armature shaft. I knocked it out, thereby pushing the bearing out of its housing because it was so reluctant to leave the shaft.

          

Pic 1 shows the result, Pic 2 what it should look like and Pic 3 the motor winding as stripped out. I managed to get the bearing back in, tho' it will never be quite the same, but first I had to sand down (fine wet and dry) both the shaft and the bore of the bearing to get a free-running fit. I had to do a bit of the same at the other end too. Then it was the laborious process of re-assembly. If you go back to Pic 3 of the second row of pix in this piece, you can see some brass spacers that support the brush frame. When I re-assembled, I had to replace these with slightly longer ones or else the brushes did not actually run on the commutator in a proper position. Who knows why?
All of this effort was, of course, with no knowledge of whether all this would work - I thought it more than likely that the motor winding had been cooked by successive efforts to make it run while it was jammed. So I decided to check it out before re-installing the motor. It actually ran, but lots of alarming smoke appeared. I kept stopping in case something really terrible was happening. By the time I took this photo, which anyway gives only a hint of what the smoke was actually like, it had reduced quite a bit.



I can only guess what was happening; maybe the oil etc with which everything was liberally coated was burning off. However, when I looked closely the source seemed to be the commuttor, which had a twin ring of sparking round it. I wonder if I put one of the brushes back in the wrong way wound, so that it has to be burnt in again to the correct shape. Whatever, I am not impressed by the performance of the motor and doubt its ability to drive a very stiff mech. Only a qualified success, therefore, and I still have a hefty re-installation job to do. 

 I did finally manage to get the Kodascope Model L back together, but it was a struggle and the result was not very satisfactory - the mech and drive are still very stiff and it is not really clear to me why. The episode has re-kindled my old dislike of Kodascopes (apart from the Kodatoy) and given me good reason. This machine was clearly not intended to be dismantled - that ridiculous hard-plumbed oiling system for a start - and there are too many areas that don't come apart enough for decent access. In accordance with what I am coming to regard as the norm for 16mm the machine is far more complicated than it needs to be for the job it has to do and the medium with which it is working. One could achieve results of equal quality from a far simpler and less bulky machine - I simply cannot accept that so much machine and so much expense was actually justified except as a money-making exercise.      

   More recently, I looked at two Kodascope Model K machines, one a plain K and the other a K-75. The plain K responded OK without much work but it and particularly the K-75 needed the application of a bit of brute force. This was supplied in the case of the K by removing the inching knob and latching a cordless drill onto it to remind the mech how to turn. The K-75 got a more manual approach as my cordless wasn't big enough for the inching knob wot I couldn't be bothered to remove (it uses one of those transverse pins to secure it to the shaft and they can be a nightmare to knock out), so I used a drill chuck from my lathe, mounted on a taper thingy, which was big enough. Neither of these machines has done anything to remove my dislike of Kodascopes in general, being very much like the L which gave me so much trouble a year or two back. One of them had rotted insulation on one of the wires to the motor speed control. This extended right back to the motor casing and it was simply not worthtrying to take the motor out and seeing what could be done. I settled for re-insulating the offending wire with heat-shrink and then dripping liquid rubber insulation (after these pix were taken) onto the point where it passes thru the motor casing.

                                                                        

This is a Kodak Sixteen 20, loaned by Pat Moules. It's in virtually mint, unused condition and, for a marvel, so is the box - these so rarely survive in really good condition.