Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Kinoton FP-18 help needed

This is topic Kinoton FP-18 help needed in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Peter Conheim (Member # 4196) on 11-01-2014, 11:30 AM:

All,

This is a real long shot, but is there anyone here who resides in the Northern California area who can assist me with an apparent gate tension problem on my FP-18 16mm machine? I have one in excellent shape with low hours, but it has developed a vertical frame instability/jitter which I can't seem to lick with replacement skate/runners/etc. and I'm out of options with my limited skills in this area. It's not subtle.

Pretty sure the problem is originating at the top of the gate/skate. I'd love to hire or trade something for assistance in this situation as the machine is all but useless. monoloop@gmail.com is my email; I'm in the San Francisco East Bay area.

Posted by Peter Conheim (Member # 4196) on 11-01-2014, 07:45 PM:

Lo and behold... I think my problem has been taken care of. Alarm bell off.

Posted by Peter Conheim (Member # 4196) on 11-02-2014, 11:11 AM:

Embarrassingly, I spoke to soon, and the "issue" remains unresolved. If there's any FP-18 (or FP-16) users out there who have experienced unusual vertical jitter/instability, regardless of condition of the "wear parts" (i.e. runners and skate), please contact me. I still need to get to the bottom of it.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-03-2014, 11:10 AM:

The FP-16/18 use a drunken cam intermittent and the cam is either delrin or nylon or some other plastic material. Older ones were fiber. I have had those both crack and just wear to the point that instability is really poor and uncontrolable and it has to be replaced. With the scarcity of Phillips 16mm parts these days I am not sure they still are available. You'd have to check. This is a part that likely can be 3-D printed as I am working on 3-D printed gate shoes at the moment and finally have one in test.

Mark

Posted by Peter Conheim (Member # 4196) on 11-03-2014, 11:27 AM:

Mark, I hope you'll keep me posted on your 3-D printing experiments, because this is exactly what I was hoping to hear someone would do for the skates and runners.

I'm a little horrified to hear that the cam is plastic; I have a spare FP-16 with many, many hours on it (decades' worth), but its intermittent was steady as a rock. It certainly hadn't shown signs of wear when I took it out of service. It's sounding like maybe I need to swap it out into the FP-18.

I have fresh/unused runner strips and one skate if you need further units for scanning. And I've discovered significant manufacturing differences in the skates from sample to sample.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-03-2014, 11:52 AM:

It's not too difficult to swap the entire movement. The later cams are a plastic material the earlier ones are fiber like fiber gears in a projector. The Dutch may have had some fancy name for the fiber back then. I had an EL-5100 that I could not get to run steady... it would be fine for a while and s splice would upset that. I opened up the movement and found a chunk missing from the drunken cam, replacing the cam and the projector ran fine. My 3-D printed skate does work but no telling how many hours it will last till it has run the course.

Posted by Peter Conheim (Member # 4196) on 11-18-2014, 11:14 AM:

Mark or anyone: are there substantial machining differences between the FP-18 and FP-16 in terms of what surrounds the intermittent assembly on either the projector side or the gear side?

I began removing the FP-16's assembly and stopped when I noted what appeared to be differences in the projector side (notably, a different clamp/support assembly around the shaft of the intermittent sprocket). I'd hate to take them both apart and have to put them right back together again. Anyone done this actual swap between these two generations of Kinoton/Philips?

Posted by Peter Conheim (Member # 4196) on 11-30-2014, 12:50 PM:

Have had success swapping intermittents as described above. The FP-18 isn't quite as rock-steady as my FP-16 was at its best, but it's a serious improvement.

Indeed, when I drained the oil from my FP-18's unstable unit, the oil had white milky clouds in it, undoubtedly scraped-off particles from the white plastic cam inside.

Does anyone have a line on replacement cams (maybe NOS) for Philips-Norelco-Kinoton intermittents, as opposed to replacing the whole assembly?