Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Quirky AW-3

This is topic Quirky AW-3 in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Shane Hoffmann (Member # 1620) on 12-07-2003, 06:51 PM:

Recently, we have had several problems with our Autowind 3 Platters. We have two of them, and the problems have ranged from splices (there was nothing wrong with them, I checked them to make sure) getting caught in the bottom roller on the take-up, making the platter stop rewinding, to the platters running contiuously, even with the low pot turned all the way down. We fixed the latter problem by replacing the led and adjusting the low and hi speeds.

Today, we ran the first show, and as I was threading for the second show (there was two movies playing in that auditorium), the bottom platter wasn't rewinding. I was going to move Brother Bear (the movie that just finished, and wasn't showing for the next show) to the bottom platter to use the middle as the rewind platter, but when I went to put the film clamps on, I found that it had rewound very loosely, and I didn't want to risk moving it. There was about an inch of give when I was pushing the clamps on. I plan on using a multimeter to adjust the resistance (as I read in the tips section), and then make necessary adjustments to the hi and lo pots on the cards. I was able to get the bottom platter to work, and used that for the remainder of the day.

Has anybody else had these problems with their AW-3s? What can be done to deal with them?

Thanks for any help you have to offer.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-08-2003, 05:08 AM:

Need more info. Please be specific on the vintage of these platters. From the sound of it, these are older ones, probably from the 70's with black rollers, non-removable brains, "U" shaped legs, etc.