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This topic comprises 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Author
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Topic: Stupid "features" of cinema equipment
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 09-06-2004 05:55 PM
Well, this is not a "feature" as much as a lack of one. The Kelmar rewind motor and control box uses an articulated arm to stop the motor when the wind is completed. It basically is just a shutoff switch. Yet there is no reason why that arm could not be shafted to a control pot that would control the motor speed, hence the control the film tension and keep a constant tension on the film from the beginning of the wind to the end. How beneficial it would be not to have that godawful tension at the end of the wind, which is what happens as the diameter of the motored reel increases. To eliminate it, you have to manually decrease the rewind speed. This can be done, but even when you do, you can't be as accurate as a servo-feedback system would, anyway in the real world, hardly anyone stands there controlling the motor speed. In fact, the auto-shutoff encourages operators to leave the bench during the rewind. A simple servo control using the existing arm could go a long way to make repetitive rewinding in change-over houses less damaging to prints.
So to make it on topic, the auto-shut-off "feature" on the Kelmar rewind motor is a stupid feature because it doesn't go far enuf.
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David Graham Rose
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 187
From: Cambridge, UK
Registered: Sep 2002
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posted 09-15-2004 02:38 PM
Greetings All From an Autumnal Cambridge
My favorite item of equipment that was of no value whatsoever to the projection suite executive was the Ennio-Marconni International Automation system model B3. Each time a pulse was received, the cam-timer would turn and activate 2 switches. The first switch being a bell, and the second, a pause relay to the cam-timer!! The net result of this rather tiresome system was that each time a pulse was received a bell rang, alerting the projection suite executive to the pulse, forcing him/her to 'accept' the pulse as 'valid', restoring the second contact to allow the cam timer to continue on it's 360 degree journey. Very often,it was too late to 'accept' the cue, and the show would have been confounded.
Such happy days. I still have some drawings of the system as installed at the Friars Theatre, Canterbury.
With influenza,
Goodnight
David
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Ian Joseph Parfrey
Film Handler
Posts: 56
From: Bollier Queensland Australia
Registered: Sep 2004
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posted 09-15-2004 05:33 PM
I would say that my choice of the worst piece of excrement to sully any projection room in the world is undoubtedly the ORC 1600B Integrated Xenon Lamphouse and Power Supply.
How this unholy piece of crap ever left the drawing board is beyond me!
Now, where does one start? So much crap, so little space.
For those of you fortunate enough not to be blighted by this thing I have attached a sketch from the manual.
First off, any engineer with any amount of brains should realise that to crow-bar a 1600 watt xenon lamp AND its associated rectifier and power supply into such a small area will generate enough heat to cook a suckling pig. And not too many electronic components enjoy being cooked...... unless you're a mercury arc rectifier. Heat kills electronics and that is exactly what happens here, with monotonous regularity.
This abhorrant bit of ship anchor also decides to "support the xenon bulb by CATHODE END ONLY with the ANODE UNSUPPORTED and floating. Why? Well to allow for expansion of course! Anodes by their nature are heavy so you can't tell me that a quartz bulb running at 230 degrees C max won't deform the bulb. And deform the bulb this junk does. I have pulled a xenon from this lamphouse after a huge 756 hours and measured a 1/4" sag over the bulb's length. This from a 1K bulb!
Next point, bulb access.
Pull out bolt from the rear of lamphouse and spin lamphouse 90 degrees. Sorry mate but things get hairy when you try to balance 61 kgs on a beam 8" across. You have got to be kidding! That does wonders for lamphouse alignment.
Next point.
Bulk purchase diodes, SCR's, fans and spark gaps cause you're gunna need 'em. Time to go for another spin!
SPIN YOUR LAMPHOUSE ROUND AND ROUND.... sounds like a square dance.
Next point.
PVC cooling ducts. These things are standard pvc tubes and bends designed to get cooling air to the freewheeling anode of the hapless xenon.
Hmmm. PVC + ULTRA VIOLET LIGHT = BRITTLENESS = CRUMBLING PVC TUBE = NO ANODE COOLING = STUFFED BULB = SPINNING LAMPHOUSE = SOUP THROUGH A STRAW FOR PROJECTIONIST.
What can I say?
This thing is JUNK,
JUNK, JUNK.
If any projectionists out there have a manager trying to put one of these things in your bio-box, just remember one thing.
PEOPLE GET LESS FOR MURDER!
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Citecita has been out of the projector business for a long while but has recently done some production. Unknown if it is being done directly by them or another source.
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