It lives on!

[Frank Raia]

After much modification the Super platter is Super once again!!!!!

[Chris Wehrman]

Awesome! I hope to have mine up and running early next year. How is that reel arm attached? Is that custom?

[Frank Raia]

Chris, its a regular reel arm. I drilled straight thru the upright and bolted it on. I can use it without taking it off with the top two platters. If I need to use the bottom platter I will have to un bolt it, but I plan on not using the bottom. That arm can accommodate 2000 or 6000 foot reels. I also mounted a reel arm behind the projector. That one can only hold 2000 foot reels

[Frank Raia]

I was able to find parts to rebuild all three payout brains. All rollers were cleaned and lubed. variac cleaned and readjusted. Fully rewired and modified motors. I took the 10 ohm resistors off the motors that were wired across the switch. Once I did that and readjusted the variac everything ran much better. The only part that is not original, from 1984, is the top payout roller. I could not find the parts and had to use a Alpha platter roller.

[Tj Hopland]

The design concept with many platters and especially the Potts type platters which included Balco and CFS was that every motor / drive system would give you the same deck RPM for any given voltage that came from the variac. Since the diameters of the film roll were also in theory identical between the takeup and payout less the small amount of film that was going over to the projector you SHOULD be able to just spin both decks at the same speed which is set by the takeup side of things and all is well.

Problem comes if say you make your decks out of thin sheet metal and drive them from the bottom so they are a little flimsy and the varying weight of the film effects how well the motor is driven and maybe you use vacuum cleaner motors and as long as you were shopping for parts at a vacuum store vacuum cleaner belts as your drive rollers. Great for the budget and maybe repairs back in the day when there was a vacuum cleaner repair store in every town, not so good for a precise and consistent drive system.

The workaround for the sloppy drive system was that when you went to take up mode you needed to slow down the take up motor which would then raise the variac voltage. Since both motors were driven off the single variac this higher voltage was then available to the payout motor which because of the switch selection isn't being slowed down means it would / could run faster than the takeup so it could catch up if it had to. With the older / base models that just had a on/off switch in the payout this also meant it was never going to run perfectly smooth.

it actually gets pretty complicated with the variables like the weight of the film changing the drive efficiency due to the flex in the decks and sometimes the mass of film on the deck which is constantly changing as the movie plays is helping you and sometimes its against you. Its pretty amazing that it worked as well as it did most of the time with all those variables and a very simple and dumb control system. Others went with more complex (and usually expensive) systems but they all did usually get the job done.


More probably useless today history if anyone cares.....

Pretty much every other brand the payout side of things had at least a partially independent if not fully independent control method for every deck so they were not depending on the mechanics turning the decks at the same speeds. That interesting since all the other brands also more or less chose more precise motors and a more precise drive method so would have likely had reasonable success driving both decks from the one variac voltage source if they had wanted to.

All the Christie's, Noreclo / Kinotone, Brown ORC, and late Balco/Potts with the DMC or SCDC options had independent controls. The Speco LP270 and Xetron XNR had a 2 stage 3 zone payout sensor. A one extreme there was off, the other was a full speed not from the variac. The wide middle range was the variac signal which was where it spent most of its time because the positive drive system and the theory that the diameters were the same but still had the option to shut off or go faster if needed.

Noreclo was really cool their take up was still the variac concept but their payout had its own variac. Instead of that variac somehow being coupled directly to the payout fingers it was driven by a servo stepper sort of motor. If the fingers were in the middle there was no change just a steady signal and super smooth operation.

If the deck was falling behind like because film was being payed out and the diameter changed the fingers would eventually be pulled into a switch which would then trigger the stepper to bump up the variac one notch which would most likely result in the fingers going back to the middle where it would run smoothly till it hit the switch again which would be several minutes.

If it did over shoot there was a switch at the other end that would step it down. There was also a time delay buffer circuit that if it stayed on either switch for a given amount if time it would step it again. I didn't ever get deep into the later Kinotone version but I think they kept that concept for quite a long time just did it with electronics.


There were other US brands that were less popular like the Simplex Aeromatic and the Eprad I think they called it the Simple Platter. The simplex has air motors driven by bacically a shop vac mounted on the floor and the controls was just a variable valve in the suction lines. Eprad had a central drive motor and shaft that came up through all 3 decks and always turned at a constant speed. The control and drive was basically a clutch that would either slip more or less depending on what was needed. Neat ideas but they had issues.

[Frank Raia]

Tj, I enjoyed reading your post. Although the super platter is highly hated, it still is going with 99% original parts!!! To be honest I wish that I had one of the alpha platters that I used for years but this one was free and its probably karma because I hated it !! Being such a simple design is probably good because I can fix or replace most of it.

[Tj Hopland]

Which payouts does yours have? The original that used the I think it was Chrysler ignition points under the roller like cover arm thing? Again Mr Potts going with as much stuff as he could that anyone could get off the shelf. Or the later design that had the little microswitch in the little plastic holder?

I don't recall what the original was like for film damage but the micro switch version even if the angle roller is in the correct spot ends up scuffing the film. It makes a little scuff strip that hits about at the optical track or in the picture area. It does take a while for it to build up but it for sure does it. Once you see it forming and look at the film you can see where its happening. Its as the film is being lifted off the last flat roller (that also doesn't have a top flange) to the angle one. If you watch it close you can see its already bending up before its off the roller surface.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Congrats. If I had a bigger booth we'd definitely set up our platter again just for learning to use it. I haven't even uncovered it enough to get a brand ID from it, but it's painted grey so I'm thinking Strong? I'll have to see if the manual is on the shelf, I think I saw it once before when I was collecting all the manuals into one place.

[Frank Raia]

Tj, It has the little micro switches. I will take pics tonight. I do not think I will see any build up on anything for some time. I have only ran 3 prints on it so far! One print I ran to and from every platter level an than again to check for scratching. None so far.

[Tj Hopland]

Because there is so little tension on the film in that area its not rubbing real hard so it would take a few weeks for it to really start to show so maybe 30+ passes. I think it could be made worse if the angled roller had got rotated a bit. It was a long time ago but I seem to recall the 'complaint' was the analog sound had lost some level and was just not good. Once I had found it at that one site I would look for it at others and turns out it was happening at pretty much all of em to some degree its just for the most part no one really noticed and it was the next guys problem and the next guy was probably 2nd run and you know the typical rep those places had.

Ryan, unless I'm forgetting some gray would be a potts or balco/strong. Lots of models and variations over their almost 40 year production run. Just thought of one, Xetron XNR was gray and overall similar at a glance except they used a rim drive so the edge of the deck had a 90 degree bend rather than that like 37 degree of the typical potts and you could see the vertical motor on the column that had a drive 'puck' mounted directly to the shaft. The Potts type all used a vacuum cleaner motor under the deck and they all had either a single or dual stack rubber tired idler wheel set up that ran on the motor shaft and then pushed up on the bottom of the deck.

[Frank Raia]

Tj here are pics of the brains IMG_20260116_204205.jpg IMG_20260116_204223.jpg

[David Ferguson]

More probably useless today history if anyone cares.....

I definitely care! I spent a lot of time in 2025 researching platter history, which was fascinating. I spoke to the son of the inventor of the platter in Germany, who kindly gave me a tour of his cinema and showed me some prototype platters made in the early 60s.

A fun fact - the original platter prototypes used light sensors rather than a swinging arm and microswitches - as microswitches weren't possible (or were hard ) to get in post WW2 Germany at the time. This worked ok - except for films with large sections of light areas where the sensor wouldn't work. I was told by the inventor that this caused a near disaster with Lawrence of Arabia (yes, he had his platter working all the way back in 1962!).

There were other US brands that were less popular like the Simplex Aeromatic and the Eprad I think they called it the Simple Platter. The simplex has air motors driven by bacically a shop vac mounted on the floor and the controls was just a variable valve in the suction lines. Eprad had a central drive motor and shaft that came up through all 3 decks and always turned at a constant speed. The control and drive was basically a clutch that would either slip more or less depending on what was needed. Neat ideas but they had issues.

I always did want to find out more about the air-driven platters. I have never seen a photo of one, or found anyone who spoke favourably of them.

I've also always wanted to get in touch with Bob Potts if he is still around, or anyone from Potts Enterprises. Anyone here know of anyone?

[Jim Cassedy]

TJ: I hate platters, with a passion I usually reserve for child molesters
and tax collectors, but I really enjoyed reading your informative post.

[Tj Hopland]

I definitely care! I spent a lot of time in 2025 researching platter history, which was fascinating

Interesting that you found platter like stuff in the 1940's? And for sure in the early 60's? At what sort of scale? I'm sure since the beginning of film there were inventors with one or two off systems scattered throughout the world so we really can't count those. When did you start seeing something you would consider actual production systems in use? And was it with xenon or some other more constant light source? Or some extended run carbon arc thing?

I had always heard that the first true 'mass produced' platters in the USA were the Noreclo's, which later became Kinoton. I don't recall specific dates but it seems like it had to be 70-72 range. It sounded like there had to have been a few installs and then I'm assuming were being demoed at trade shows and publications in that era. Xenon and automation seemed to be becoming standard on small and medium size screen new builds so they were known to most by that time. Its also the period in the USA where twins were popping up and people were starting to conceive of what at the time must have seemed like a megaplex with crazy screen counts like 3 or even 4! So all the parts and needs were coming together at the same time.

I think by 74 2-4 screens were getting common. It seems like a twin may still have been done with 2 projectors but probably running automated with 6k reels but if you were going big you went with platters. It appears that Christie was the first American model that had national dealers and Christie was already 'in' with several of the major circuits selling them Xenon systems. Potts and Drive In which later became Speco were around early but I'm guessing were more regional at first.

Potts possibly made a deal with ORC and thats how his design first got out? I don't know that just guessing since I know there were orange ORC badged 'super platters'. If you look at the Super Platter manual you can see it was written the same as the ORC manuals at the time. I'm not sure how long those lasted. There must have been some kind of shake up because it seems like about the time ORC went brown they came up with a very different platter design.

This also seems like about the time Cinema Film Systems appeared with a very similar console design to ORC's and the Potts platter was blue and named Super Platter. Not sure who designed what for who but it seems like that spit had to be different people going their own way. I think that's also close to the same time frame that ORC and Century combined. For those that don't know ORC I think they started doing xenon stuff for military and then got into cinema so since they were selling xenon it made sense for them to also be able to offer a platter to go with the xenon stuff.
It was for sure a popular idea that many people wanted so it seems like pretty much every manufacturer that was already in the industry and some that weren't at least tried to get in and had something to offer by the later 70's. National theater supply was still big and selling Simplex and Strong which had xenons so they for sure would have wanted a platter so they could still offer a complete booth and their offering was the air drive. I'm not sure when Ballentyne bought them or when the 'gray' Potts platter was developed but since the Simplex platter sucked (pun intended) it would make sense that who ever was in control of Simplex at the time was looking for something better and ended up with Potts.

I'm not sure who was selling the Norelco platters here originally. Ballentyne I think was doing final assembly and 'Americanizing' Norelco products like say an FP20 in the 60's but 70's was the era of the Pro 35 VIP system so I'm assuming for one reason or another they didn't have their own 'modern' system and distribute Norelco stuff. Maybe Kinoton also played into that? I know by the 80's it was Kinoton so they must have set up their own North American distribution? Ballentyne I think tried to avoid platters at first since they had just come up with the VIP 2 projector system which even had options like after the automated change over the projector would reverse and in theory be ready for the next show on its own.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Ahh, follow up, our platter in storage is a POTTS AP3 sn 0199
... and a POTTS MUT (T-6) sn 0299

I actually found a 2000 dated document with all the film equipment models and serial numbers! Thank you, prior projectionists! (I had only just graduated college in 2000). I had not rifled through the "miscellaneous" pocket of one of the manual binders until now.

At the time of that document creation, we had a CP65 instead of the CP650, so perhaps our CP650+DMA8Plus arrived at the same time as the AP20, but I doubt it, bet there was a SRD upgrade between 2000 and 2016 and an effort to support consumer digital formats into the cinema sound system. Our retired DTS-6D was also in use in 2000, so TBD when the DTS-XD10 arrived.