What is the most common Gear Grease to get for Projection Booths?

[Yves Leibowitz]

Hello All,

I am looking into getting Gear Grease for Century Film Projectors. What is the most common brand used by todays and past projection booths that is easy to obtain?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

On the Century you should be using super lube. For the intermittent I used LaVezzi oil which unfortunately is no longer available. So some 20 weight equivalent synthetic compressor oil could be substituted.

[John Eickhof]

i always used a drop or two of projector oil on century gears as recommended by the old master machinist larry little, otherwise any short fibre light grease will do like vaseline. stay away from lubriplate as it has a tendancy to harden in drier climates making an abrasive coating that will wear gears rapidly. i still prefer parafin free turbo or refrigeration oil over synthetics in intermittents, as they remove deposits better then synthetic oils. usually a 7 to 10wt oil iso 32 is the best, intermittent oil should be flushed and changed every 12 months under daily use.

[Steve Guttag]

I never liked Vaseline. It would liquify too much and then spin off and leave practically no lubrication. Super Lube cling better and doesn't break down like Vaseline. If you put an infrared heat sensor on the gears, you can see that Super-Lube has them run cooler.

[Sean Weitzel]

I've always run white lithium grease on my JJ's. Maybe it's time to switch to Super Lube or is the white grease ok for the extremely few hours per year I run them?

I do have the intermittents filled with LaVezzi oil.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Sean, If you switch to Superlube the gear train should really be cleaned up first. Mixing the two creates a sort of white sludge...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

i always used a drop or two of projector oil on century gears as recommended by the old master machinist larry little, otherwise any short fibre light grease will do like vaseline. stay away from lubriplate as it has a tendancy to harden in drier climates making an abrasive coating that will wear gears rapidly. i still prefer parafin free turbo or refrigeration oil over synthetics in intermittents, as they remove deposits better then synthetic oils. usually a 7 to 10wt oil iso 32 is the best, intermittent oil should be flushed and changed every 12 months under daily use.

John, Show me a Century intermittent that will still have any oil in it after a year. Even the sealed ones leak! Normally a weekly topping off is sufficient to keep the insides clean since you are essentially doing a constant flush in.slow motion. Also, if you use synthetic compressor oil that also has PTFE particles mixed in, then there won't be any deposits. I pulled a Version 1 Christie P-35 out of the theater in Vernal, UT when we were converting to digital. The projector had been.in service for 19 years. I opened up the movement just out of curiosity as it was the original. I was expecting to see major wear, especially on.the cam pin. But there was no wear on anything and the oil was also still clean.

[Stefan Scholz]

With a good lubrication a star cross should withstand 500 x 10E6 to 1 x 10E9 rotating circles. This is up to 4 billion images swapped. This requires a pressure resistant, thin oil filin the gear mech. Outside gears, I have used little as possible of a good grade lithium gear with success. I would tend to use the same on my Century JJ, but that's a collector's item, and not in use.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Stefan, I think it depends on who manufactures the parts, the steel, quality of the heat treatment and tjhe machining tolerance. I guarantee you that many intermittents have gone way beyond 4 billionI images, most DP-70 still have original untouched intermittents. But they do place magnets inside to pick up metal particles. I am also convinced it has to do with the lubricant used. I ran LaVezzi oil in close to 50 DP-70 and the only breakdowns were an occasional motor problem. I changed gate bands once a year was about all.
Before digital there were also many Brenkerts sftill running. They were last made new in 1958! They also had a soft metal star and cam and had no magnets inside the intermittent. They were oil bath with just a screen type filter in the oil pump.

[Gordon McLeod]

I use Mollidnium di sulphide black grease on Century/westrex gears with very good luck

[Jim Cassedy]

While we're discussing lubricants and oils. . . is there a substitute for the 'damping fluid' that's
used in the dash-pots of Century sound heads? I recently encountered one at a venue that
was all but dry. Most of the time they're running Dolby digital so it isn't a problem, but when
testing with tone loops, there is some sprocket flutter in one machine (the dry one!) & not the other.

. . . and when I first started projecting in the early 1970's, there was a big jar of Vaseline in
almost all of the old AIP Theaters booths The Union would send me to work at. I used to
wonder what it was used for,. until one of the old projectionguys told me he used it as gear
grease on the Motiograph AA projectors that were quite common at the AIP's ... or at least
that's the story he told me (and his wife)

[Gordon McLeod]

Originally the century dash pot fluid was glycerin and later a silcone oil

[Joshua Camerata]

We always used white lithium grease or Super Lube on SA's, and I see no reason why they wouldn't be excellent for JJ's. The JJ manual calls for petroleum jelly, however, I feel that's an outdated method. White lithium grease can dry up over time, though.

[Joshua Camerata]

Oh and also, rheolube is a top choice, and is perfect for the application. Upon doing more research on Super Lube, it's actually more suitable for plastic gears.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Here is a related Q. One of our JJ intermittent mechs leaks slowly... and thus has clean LeVezzi oil in it. The other however appears to be hermetically sealed. It has oil that has changed color to a darker shade.

Can I easily drain/flush a JJ intermittent in place?

Or is it best to pull it before cracking that drain screw (which will no doubt have a deteriorated fiber washer that needs replacing).

Source on those vulcanized fiber washers or suitable replacement?