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Pay attention to what Brad said about the screws...Christies recommended fix is Lock-Tight....the low strength grade.

Also, watch out for the ultramittent sprocket is you clean with a toothbrush! A cought bristle will result in horizontal scratches pulsating from top to bottom. I prefer to clean sprockets and rollers with a clean rag and q-tips!

That lower rear cover on the Simplex really should never come into play, of course, but not too many people know that's what those ridges are for -- just in case that lower loop gets a little too big.

"Slapguards" is kind of an interesting term. The Ballantyne 35's use a "Slap Roller" just below the intermittent sprocket. If the film was threaded properly, though, film ran throguh nice and quiet.

Pat

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The last two days, I found out why this happened in that specific booth. I ran that booth as a projectionist for the last two days, and probably will for quite some time. We kind of "inherited" that place.

First, there was a film cleaner bracket bolted to the mast of the AW-3 platters on all five houses. If extreme care is not taken during threading, the film can easily drag right over the end of the guidance roller shaft on the upswing to the upper roller. In addition, the film can also drag on the whole frontside of the film cleaner bracket and start cutting a slot in the guidance roller stand-off. I think this bracket was installed by the installing contractor, but I cannot be certain. I cannot blame Christie on this one, unless they made that provision on the mast at the factory.

However...

Secondly, while I was inspecting those extremely cheap green plastic rollers that crumble nicely, I noticed that edge that covers the roller can come in contact with the film while breaking down and building the print if the adjustable roller castor assy is twisted 180 degrees! To add insult to injury, detection of the problem could be overlooked very easily if the lighting in the work area is very poor like most booths are.

I wonder where the Christie Engineers had their heads inserted on that one......

Sure - the Christie equipment is easy to operate, and very easy to keep clean. But there are just too many "GOTCHAS" that the average operator or manager will fall into, especially if they are in a hurry to get things done when they are not totally familiar with what they are running. (Which also is quite common, as we all know.)

Most of the short-comings I see in this equipment are, in my opinion, attributed to poor designing with cheap components. I guess that is normal these days.

Luck has it my way - I have two 17-year old kids on my booth staff in the theater that are really interested in doing it right. One of the kids told me that he learned more in the last two days about the equipment than he did since he was hired to do booth work in that theater.

(Maybe I accomplished something after all.)

I must say I could easily make the same silly arguments against any other make/model of platter that you have made against the AW3. Take for example Strong's foolish "double roller/single roller" situation at the top of the tree on takeup. The kind of idiots who can not figure out which way to thread a roller are the same kind of idiots who will thread over both of those Strong rollers and scratch the living daylights out of the film during it's high tension takeup. Besides, if you will pay closer attention the next time you work that booth, those rollers can NOT spin 180 degrees if they are properly installed. Perhaps there was an idiot who screwed around with things before you got there, eh? Might I also ask why your rollers are "crumbling" apart in your hands? I have never even HEARD of this happening, let alone witnessed it. Also, if you don't like the film cleaner bracket mounted on the platter, just take the thing off. It's only held on by 2 bolts.

I don't mean to sound like an ass here, but I feel none of your complaints are very valid when you step back and look at the bigger picture. Your gripes seem to come from your lack of experience with the Christie line of equipment, which is of course not your fault, but please consider working with the equipment for a couple of months before you pass judgment. Just because it doesn't thread like a Strong or whatever it is that you are used to working with on a daily basis doesn't mean that it was poorly designed or is crap. In all fairness, try throwing that same kid who was running the Christie booth without proper training into a booth with a Norelco AAII without training and see how well he fares. I'll bet you'll not only have lots of scratched film but a damaged shutter assembly as well! See my point?

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Sure Christie had LOTS of flaws, and most have been documented here on the forums (many by me), but the company has made improvements to their design and upgrades to their existing machines that have taken care of most of those problems.

I'll send you a picture of those rollers on the MUT so you can see what I am talking about.

I already took pictures of the film cleaner bracket, but I will re-take them again in the SQ format. In addition, I will take pictures of the green rollers with the broken plastic hubs.

As far as the intermittant loop is concerned, I'll send pictures on how I check it to make sure it is not too big.

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- dave
Look at this! His chin strap has been cut!

Yes it is very important that the lower loop size be established by the pad roller formed on the Christie. Seems funny that even though there is instructions taped to the console, the operators "just don't get it."

The use the finger test as a final check to gage the size, and to make sure film is properly engaged on the sprockets. The included picture shows that it is impossible to touch the rear casting if the loop is formed properly.

As far as the cheap rollers are concerned, none actually crumbled in my hand. They do that on the shafts. There are some pictures that show the hub so badly worn out. These failures are happening over a very short peroid of time. Why?

Some pictures included show how the roller can be positioned 180 degrees and scratch the film. Both MUTS are the same way. We only had the the theater three days now, so they had one guy come in to build film. I watched him for about 30 seconds...and guess what? The roller was in the wrong position.

The film cleaner bracket mounted where it is will cause a problem. It is simply just not the place for it. There is room for it on the top of the DTS reader head bracket, so that is where they will go.