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Order some of the new douser plates. They work really well. I have
them installed on my 6K houses and have not warped yet. That and the
new douser lock work nicely.

Send me an email to 251 and I will give you the part number and other information to order the new plates.

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Will Kutler -- The AW-3 also has some "improved" electronics. I have no experience with it-how is it?

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I have done some of these conversions. It consists of a new speed sensor that contains an IRED instead of a green LED and a photo diode instead of a CdS cell. It dispenses with the "old" LED power supply board that needs adjusting all the time. There is a new board that replaces it which doesn't have the three adjustment pots. There is just a resistor in its place. Also, there is a new filter card which has a different pattern silk screened on it. Instead of a "gradient" of dots it has a series of tapering lines that are thick on one end and narrow to a point on the other.

Once you get these parts installed and working right, the timing/adjustments of the system are greatly simplified. Basically you set the top speed to 24/25 RPM and the "low speed" (20% on the payout plate) until the motor just begins to hum. From then on you don't have to worry about the cell drifting on you. Setting the resistance to 70K? is a thing of the past. You won't see the film wrapping around the brain on startup like you used to and the payout will be much smoother and more reliable.

Just remember: I said, "Once you get these parts installed and working right"...
You have to completely tear the platter apart to do it. You have to take all three decks off and remove the center "axles". The filter card needs to be replaced and the cell/sensor unit has to be replaced. This is where it gets funky. You'll have to carefully bend the bracket on the new "cell" to get it in the right position. Sometimes you can't get the thing to work on the low speed adjustment. If bending the bracket doesn't work you'll need to get a new motor control card(s).

I have one theatre (18 screens) where the platters came with these things installed. I have had the fewest platter problems out of this theatre in all the places I have with Christie platters. I have one theatre where I have completed all the conversions. (14 screens) About 90% of their platter problems just seemed to evaporate as soon as the work was completed correctly. I have two more theatres where I am about half way done with the conversions. The half of the platters that are converted have been having few, if any, problems. The ones that I haven't converted yet still have to be callibrated every so often.

I only have two complaints about them:

1. They can be a pain in the ass to do the conversions.
   
2. What took them so long to come out with this?
   

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I like your second question, Randy. But as for the first, I'd glady do the conversion if the benefits were worth it.

This is the only thing that Christie has come out with as an "improvement" to their line of projection equipment that I do not like. Take a closer look real carefully. The speed has a "bump" in it and is too sensitive at it's slowest setting. This will wreak havoc on a long movie (3 hour Costner-type) when you get toward the end. This could've been corrected by elongating the linear lines on the light filter at the darkest end. Also, those lines could've been done to a point where payout is a couple of RPM shy of what the takeup is capable of. This would've allowed the platter to be timed to a point where full throttle could've been just BARELY enough to spin at the start of the movie, thus allowing an even smoother operation over the rest of the speed's range. As it is, there is a good 10% or more amount of headroom upon startup, which is not needed and IMHO is a bad idea.

Also, the reason your film is not wrapping around the back side of the brain anymore with these is because the speed is running too high (again, my opinion). You can take one of the older un-modified platters and turn up the speed for the EXACT same effect...but that would be foolish.

Christie's been doing a great job lately with improvements, but this one's a stinker. Keep the old graduated filter and circuitry. Wait until they perfect this design before you continue to change them out. A thrown print is not worth it and this year hasn't brought us one of those yet for you to see what the effects are.

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If the douser melting is really a problem, have your engineer wire the xenon circuit through the exciter relays on the automation and the exciter circuit through the xenon relays. That way when the douser would "normally" open and the "exciter" would turn on, what would really be happening is the xenon would ignite. Same goes for shutdown. (The exciter/led would of course turn on when the START button was pressed and turn off when the failsafes drop.) Doing this on some lamphouses requires cutting into the interlock failsafe circuit, but on an SLC you can just move two wires with most automations and voila...no more need for an electric douser!

The bean counters should be pleased with this as well, for they will never have to purchase another douser plate, changeover coils and pay for technician time to repair the darned things.

When I put the first of these in, it was on a house that was playing Pearl Harbor. I chose that one because the print was getting thrown and I was sick and tired of having to retime the platter all the time. We'd get it perfect and it'd be wonky again in two weeks. (I assume it was because the cells were drifting?)

Like I said, I have one theatre where these were OEM and they rarely have problems. The one theatre where all of them are complete has had 90% of their problems just evaporate overnight. The two theatres where I'm 1/2 done have problems in the ones that aren't converted and virtually none in the ones that are.

I agree that there is still room for improvement but they are still better than the CdS cells.

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