Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Projector Down Inquiry

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Posted by Michael Gonzalez (Member # 593) on 05-13-2003, 01:02 PM:

I know that everyone pretty much has a different amount of screens and projectors so the answers may vary, however, what would you say is a "normal" amount of projectors being down for a significant time (more than one day) in say a years span. Or I guess another way to put it. How many projectors have you had go down, for longer than a day, in the past year? What was the reason that it took longer than a day to go back on screen? Did you have to wait for a tech. to show up? Was the part you needed not available or you had to wait a significant amount of time to receive needed part? I am just curious as to some of the answers you guys may have.

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 05-13-2003, 03:03 PM:

I worked the booth for 20 years and never had a machine go down. I suspect if projector breakdown is a common problem today it's because of the less than qualified personnel they have running them and the things never get serviced or cleaned.

Posted by Jim Alexander (Member # 226) on 05-13-2003, 03:41 PM:

Having Century-C projectors, that were put in in 1947 you'd expect that we would have had a lot of down time, considering their age, but that is not the case. I can't even think of one incident in the past six years where we hav lost a show due to projection system failures. We have had delays of no more than 20 minutes, but no lost shows.

Posted by David Graham Rose (Member # 1450) on 05-13-2003, 03:47 PM:

Based on a study of about 90 multiplexes across various chains here in the good old UK of B, which I carried out 2 years ago the avarage down time of a cinema screen in a multiplex is 7 hours per year. This study was undertaken by my research group and the finding have been published in J.Sci.Cin.Apps. Vol9.p56

The parameters we took into account were as follows;

a) time of call to Company Duty Engineer

b) Nature of problem (problems that may have been rectified had fully trained staff been on duty were instantly eliminated, since these are of the theatre chains own making)

c) time of day at which the problem occured

d) the manner in which individual chains treat projection staff. For instance if a theatre allows Union representation/allows staff time off for family matters/bereavements and the general attitude to flexible working.

From this research we managed to create a mathematical model, dependant on these variables (and others) to elucidate a formula that gives a maximum mean allowed down time.

To reproduce the formula mathematically is beyond many browsers capabilities but in a nutshell it is;

T(D)= INTEGRAL inf/-inf Ny lambda squared/4.634 + 8.1(PI)cubed all over (G(phi/lambda squared)+1)

where N is the number of properly trained technicians in a cinema
G is a value calculated by my group on the efficiency of a Cinema Circuit management

y is the enthusiasm of the Chief Technician as defined by the Anthony scale (see paper for details)

and

G is fully dependant on the ratio of paperwork to actual proper projection duties a Technician can expect to do in a normal days work (G = PW/PD)

Phi is another variable, fully defined, yet depends on whether there is full automation or mainly partial end sequence automation

Due to the restrictive UK and General Companies act I am unable to 'name and shame' individual circuits here in the UK, but rest assured that there is little difference. So any UK projjies out there you can be rest assured that;

a) the grass is not greener on the other side and

b) Yes! You do work for the the best of a bad bunch!!

With many solemnities I bid you all

Good Evening from the Dreaming Spires of Cambridge

David

Dr. D.G. Rose B.Sc. (Hons)
Department of Cinema Technology
St.John's Cambridge

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-13-2003, 03:48 PM:

By "projector," do you mean just the mechanical device, or do you include other devices such as lamphouses, rectifiers, automation, platters, sound processors, etc.?

I've never heard of a projector/soundhead being out of commission for more than one show (and then it was due to belts that broke). I have heard of fried rectifiers, fried transformers in Christie platters, and Dolby power supply issues that caused more than a day's worth of downtime due to the need to order parts and/or the need to get a technician in to fix the problems.

In general, though, booth equipment seems to be very reliable and lost shows are extremely rare.

Posted by Per Hauberg (Member # 529) on 05-13-2003, 04:39 PM:

No matter, which make of projectors, You choose, it seems You'll get pretty reliable stuff. My only more-than-one-day stop was due to a broken (litteraly) shutter shaft on my 1937 Bauer B-5, running on it's sixtieth year more than ever. Originally running 2000 feet c/o, this little machine for the last 16 years of its life ran single duty in my new screen 2 with spool tower, 3 shows a day. That nite with the shaft, a smart dealer talked me into installing a Victoria 9 overnight instead, to get on without standing still for more than max one day. The Cinemec showed up to be in bad shape, and was not running until 3-4 days later; -lots of repair jobs to come, until a new tech took over and got the thing running, but still not with the steady picture, i had on the old Bauer. The thing really lived out the nickname "Rock & Roll Projector". This year, -last week of june, Miss Victoria will move to a dark closet, to rest beside the B 5, a pair of old front shutter Ernemanns, a pair of B 11's and an old, danish Bofa, until i find space for showing them for my audience. Screen 2 will ultimo june at last get that Kinoton FP 30 D, i've been dreaming for. In screen 1, those two Dp70's, now 43 years old, have both tried film packing around the intermittent, causing the fibre gear wheel to go, but since dealing direct with Kinoton, Hamburg - and keeping a single wheel in stock, this has never been trouble worth mentioning. (Knock on wood) As everyone else running DP 70, i kneel down, heading against Eindhoven, Holland, once a day in respect to the great fathers of the best projector ever made. [thumbsup]

Posted by Michael West (Member # 428) on 05-13-2003, 05:22 PM:

i guess a lot of this would depend on the avaliability of a part and whether or not a one would have the resources to get a replacment asap.
only in the past few years have i ever seen a "projector down - black house, we were out for about a half day i think. these incidents were attributed to the rectifiers although ten years ago i knew someone whose intermittant went on a simplex 35.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 05-13-2003, 05:27 PM:

I've lost a couple of shutter gears in the Brenkerts I ran up until last year. The only reason that didn't shut a screen down was that I had a couple of spares on the shelf & it doesn't take more than about 10 minutes to unbolt one and get another on the soundhead. Given the apparent lack of availabilty of quality parts for these machines, I retired them and put Simplexes in this year... just one more to go! Were it not for that, I'd probably retire myself with these things in the booth. As Scott say though, the projector/soundhead parts of these systems are pretty darned reliable, with the potential for failure being more a factor of how many components make up a particular screen.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the negative cable burn off at the crimp lug on one of my old X-60B's. That did shut that screen down for the night, but we were back up the next day with new cables. Those lamps are going this year for pretty much the same reason as the Brenkerts and not because of any quality issues. After 30 some-odd years, they're just worn out. These are "useful life" issues though, and not on the level of, say, trying to see how many turns you can get out of an intermittent with no oil.

Other than that, there have been a couple of " [bs]

, I forgot that" issues that have killed a screen once or twice [eyes]

over the last 16 years. I learned the hard way the value of keeping connections tight on the bakelite plates on those old Strong power supplies.

Then, there's the occasional loss of a diode in one power supply or another... even the monsters on those old Strong supplies. I'm still using one of those ORC 4kW supplies, which had a nasty habit of blowing diodes. I put bigger ones in there, and haven't lost another one in that supply in the last 5 or 6 years.

I lost the fiber drive gear on a Ballantyne intermittent last year, which shut down one of my indoor screens for the night. Fortunately, I was able to take a quick ferry ride the next morning to get (2!) spares, and got the screen back up for the first show the next day. That one I haven't figured out yet, considering that machine lives in oil. I'm taking a personal pass on it though, since it had been used and abused for 20 years before I was fortunate enough [Razz]

to acquire it.

Most of this stuff doesn't seem totally unreasonable over a 16 to 20 year period, though I've also seen booths that have run without a lot of maintenance and not lost a show in more than 40 years.