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Topic: Changing oil in first generation Devry

Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-12-2015 07:30 PM

Sam,

Yea, once you replaced the crappy factory ball bearings with good rubber sealed bearings they are uber reliable as well as nice and quiet. The very last belt kits Christie sold for the P-35GP also fixed all it's flutter issues. Owners of them got to enjoy this smooth running projector for about the last six or seven years before converting to digital. Incidentally, the belts with those kits also lasted the remainder of the life of the projectors. Cine-X35 came with those style belts from the beginning...

Mark

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Sam D. Chavez
Film God

Posts: 2153
From: Martinez, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 10-12-2015 07:53 PM

You gotta admit it's a funny way to put it.

It only took from 1980 to about 2000 and countless revisions to get it close to good.

All history now.

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Steve Kraus
Film God

Posts: 4094
From: Chicago, IL, USA
Registered: May 2000

posted 10-12-2015 08:08 PM

I never did figure out why they had such small shutters, as though the bare minimum to block the light beam (and not always successfully). There's a reason other projectors have shutters the size they do and it's to minimize the transition time from on to off and off to on, as that must come from time the light could otherwise be on assuming you don't want travel ghost. A perfect shutter would instantly and totally block the light just the instant before the film starts to move and unblock just as the film stops. The closer you are to that the brighter your picture. Christie did eventually go with a one blade 2X shutter which helps but still, a large shutter can do that too.

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Sam D. Chavez
Film God

Posts: 2153
From: Martinez, CA USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 10-12-2015 09:21 PM

This projector had a very humble start as a custom hollywood home screening room projector. I believe it was a Charlie Ajar design. He was very popular and thus had a ready home screening room market.

It needed to be compact first of all and was made largely from fairly standard parts from catalogs, an example was the Boston gearbox selected. The mounting selected dictated the distance away from the aperture and that's all she wrote; stuck with this limitation forever.

This design was bought by Christie and then the larger lamphouses in commercial cinemas soon revealed the limitations of the gearboxes so the design was changed to a belt drive shutter and eventually a double speed one wing shutter.

Many, many, many revisions later until just about every part in the machine was redesigned and you had a reasonable projector.

But it kept Christie in the market until it was time to be replaced by D Cinema machines from Christie and others.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-12-2015 10:10 PM

I agree it's hilarious they got it right just a half dozen years before the end. When I was at Claco I had about 60 of them to maintain. The bearings and then the belt kits did the most good for them. Except for an occasional C/O coil or motor they were relatively trouble free once fixed properly. People also had a bad habit of over tightening the belts. This led to a high wear rate for the aluminum pulleys and the belts. The last pulley kit was made from all self lubricating plastic of some sort, amazing stuff as they all lasted the remainder of the time everyone ran film. I installed a prototype belt kit at Jackson Hole after Clint Eastwood complained about flutter in the sound. When the kit arrived I had a good laugh at all the plastic stuff. But as I learned, never underestimate plastic! Eventually I pulled all but one locations worth of Christie's out during conversions. Many of them still sit in the booths.

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Jacob Delaney
Film Handler

Posts: 23
From: Rancho Cucamonga, California, USA
Registered: Dec 2014

posted 10-16-2015 03:23 PM

Since I have to open the intermittent part way for the oil to drain, I decided to just take it apart and look inside.
It took a total of seven screws to open it up (add four for taking it out of the projector).

This is how dirty it looks after already changing the oil.
I'm going to just put in 10w motor oil in it after I clean it up and if it seizes or whatever then I'll just throw it out. I'm not planning to run anything special on it anyway.

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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006

posted 10-17-2015 12:55 PM

quote: Jacob Delaney
Is this the same one you're talking about?
"Model 389 power amplifier 75 watts"

No. The boat-anchor DeVry Amp I had was this one:

The chassis must have been made out of lead. It was VERY heavy.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-17-2015 03:09 PM

Do NOT use regular non detergent motor oil!! That is the surest way to ruin it.... Straight 10 weight might work just fine as it was probably a pretty common oil back in the day. Most auto parts stores have it. Or an equivelent Shell Rottella oil.

Mark

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Jacob Delaney
Film Handler

Posts: 23
From: Rancho Cucamonga, California, USA
Registered: Dec 2014

posted 10-17-2015 08:32 PM

I thought non detergent was good for projectors? I got 12 quarts of Accel SAE 10 motor oil. The description says:

quote:
A good straight mineral engine lubricant refined by modern methods for older cars and trucks which are operated under mild service conditions.
Non-Detergent SAE 10 Motor Oil is a pure, petroleum based oil with no additives. It helps prevent rust and wear by providing a lubricating film on engine parts. For use in many air compressor applications.

Are you saying I should get normal detergent oil or did you think I had the standard 10-30w?

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Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-22-2015 11:39 AM

Projectors don't like detergent based oil
most likely they used SAE20 in that machine as that was the common standard oil in the Siper The E7 and the Century C in the early days

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-22-2015 12:35 PM

SAE 20 weight was used in Century's. Simplex oil was about 9 weight. Simplex's do not have as large of an oil spiral on the shafts as do Century's. I had a customer ruin a Super some years back by running SAE 20 weight in the movement and projector oil cups. Then I had the customer that used sewing machine oil in his X-L because he said the dealer charged too much for a quart of the correct stuff... [Eek!]

That rebuild cost him a bunch!

Mark

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Paul Dorobialski
Film Handler

Posts: 11
From: west allis wisconsin
Registered: Mar 2013

posted 10-22-2015 04:31 PM

Back in the 1980's I inherited the Educator model Devry.1000 ft take up. No magazine so I outfitted a 2000 ft spyider to the top. I didn't use the amplifier, but did sell the pair of #50 tubes that came with it. I have still the small cans of Devry oil for the projector. The last film I played on it before the motor went up in smoke was a Pixar short call Knick Knack. I got atleast 5 good years out of the projector. A projector collector in Aurora IL bought from me and he has it now.

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Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-22-2015 06:30 PM

The original standard simplex book stated SAE20
the XL originally was a Cappella oil approximately SAE10

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Paul Dorobialski
Film Handler

Posts: 11
From: west allis wisconsin
Registered: Mar 2013

posted 10-23-2015 07:23 PM

I have some sealed cans of Strong Simplex projector oil I would part with, plus some Strong Simplex sound head oil, too.

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Tony Bandiera Jr
Film God

Posts: 3067
From: Moreland Idaho
Registered: Apr 2004

posted 10-25-2015 10:55 AM

quote: Sam Chavez
This projector had a very humble start as a custom hollywood home screening room projector. I believe it was a Charlie Ajar design. He was very popular and thus had a ready home screening room market.

It needed to be compact first of all and was made largely from fairly standard parts from catalogs, an example was the Boston gearbox selected. The mounting selected dictated the distance away from the aperture and that's all she wrote; stuck with this limitation forever.

This design was bought by Christie and then the larger lamphouses in commercial cinemas soon revealed the limitations of the gearboxes so the design was changed to a belt drive shutter and eventually a double speed one wing shutter.

Sam is spot on. The original design was indeed done by Charlie Ajar. I worked for him at his shop in North Hollywood (Universal Projector). The earliest versions he made had the Lavezzi Super Simplex style intermittent in them, and a horrible motor that often needed to get a spin to start. Original gate and trap assembly was similar to a Super as well.

Later versions got a better motor and the Ultramittent.

Lamphouses were available as an incandescent style with a slide projector bulb (which was only good for 25 hours and would always fail before a changeover), the horrid Kniesley (sp?) 500w xenon and then, a terrific L.P. Assoc. 500w xenon with a magnetic rectifier designed to run off any standard 120v receptacle. (I only drew about 11 amps at full power.) I think member Jim Henk on here has the LP lamphouse I sold to him a few years ago...

The other market Charlie had for these machines was for location work for dailies. He had custom shipping cases made for the projector/lamp, base and a small mono sound system (using preamp and eq/VCA cards custom designed by USL if memory serves) and a Crown DC75 amp. The sound pickup had a trick sliding assembly to select a mono solar cell or a single track mag head.

I ran one of those for the dailies on an 80's comedy called "Surrender" Surrender cast and crew credits list and ran several of the home screening rooms as well. A job I did last year (upgrade to digital) had TWO of the older version projectors that I assembled being removed.....I tried to get one of them from the client but they wanted them for display purposes.

Charlie became pretty well-off from his deal with Christie....his idea of pocket change was always about $20,000.00 or so.... [Eek!]

Another fun thing about working for Charlie was that he was quite a character. Many famous names in the industry had some goofy variation of their real name, which Charlie would say to their face without hesitation. He was also a very good machinist..he used to call himself "Micrometer eye".

I very foolishly challenged him on that last one...a studio wanted a custom Simplex XL plate cut to a very non-standard size...I bet Charlie lunch at the Palms Restaurant that he couldn't get the plate to within .005" in either dimension, and he couldn't measure it at all till he was done...he got the horizontal spot-on and the vertical was off by .0015". [Razz]

That lunch for us cost me a full week's pay and then some. [Big Grin]

But it was worth it, I got a lot of great experience from working for Charlie (and a lot of laughs too.)

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