Great video and very informative. Just picked up two Eiki RT-0 with this problem. I started looking for a parts breakdown to see how this could be fixed, when I came across yours. watched it from start to finish. liked how to showed how to do this and really liked how you explained what you were doing. Great job! Now I'll be able to repair my to projectors thanks to your instructional video! Thanks!
Larry the KING of Eiki repair, as well as among all things projection. Great video!! Thank you. And not for nuithin as we say here in Brooklyn, this is the WORST design for a focus adjuster of any projector I have ever seen. We had about 10 Eikis when I was asked to take care of the A/V supply room. EVERY single one of them has that damn rubber sheath that morphed over time into melted black goop. Eiki designers just made it a MUCH too much complicated solution to such a simple function, i.e, to move the lens closer or farther away from the gate. Who cam up with this idiotic idea, especially given that the Eikis, generally are well-designed projectors. Although I must have to ask why oh why did the industry as a whole, decided that people were incapable of learning how to manually thread projectors...it's a mystery to me. The minute they covered the simple 4 or 5 threading points of a projector with incredibly complicated contraptions which intrinsically were potential film SHREDDING devices, the elegant simplicity of the manually threaded projector became what we all have watched in horror -- a film Cuisinart! a few broken sprockets, a bad splice and you can hear film being turned into celluloid mulch. And on many models of say the stalward and trust-worthy first Bell and Howell's 300 series were turned into film chomping monsters just so teachers in the thousands upon thousands of schools where B&H were used, wouldn't need to learn what every 12 year old in the A/V club could master in half and hour. How stupid did the execs at B&H think teacher were? And not to mention, once those threading contraptions were screwed onto perfectly good manual projectors, try to gettin the film that was getting chewed up out of them. In those first B&H 500 "automatic threading " projectors, most times you would have to simply cut the film to get it out, and when it did come out, it was crushed and fan-folded like an accordion -- a nightmare for every A/V projectionist, because his faculty supervisor would invariably blame him and he'd be off the A/V Squad and then how was he going to get excused from gym period? .
Larry your the best! I have that projector but had a different problem. That first take up slack roller down after the lens keeps bobbing up and down during viewing. Any ideas would certainly help.
Great video Larry. My RT-0 had the same issue; weak focus knob. I manage to use a piece of 3/16" ID gas line rubber tubing from my auto parts store. Fitted snug as a rug on the knurled shaft. No tape required. Focus now working like new.
The Great and Legendary Larry Urbanski is a wealth of knowledge for all things having to do with Motion Picture Film and Projectors! I used his upgrade kit on my projector and it's been running smooth every since.
The shroud on the magnetic rollers is there to reduce and electrical or static interference affecting the magnetic sound head and associated components. I have serviced machines where someone did not replace the magnetic roller shroud and the magnetic sound still played fine. The shroud is probably engineered to stop interference in various climates and humidity's where static could occur.
Two of my SSL-O have the same problem. Now... They no longer have that problem!!! Thank you very much for this fix and making a video of it for the rest of us. Tremendous!! Ya just got yourselves a Like 👍 and a new Sub!
A couple reasons. The Elmo is engineered to have any portion of the film that makes full contact to the film surface to be undercut, or rubber. The urethane grips, but does not slip on the film as it is being projected. This does not cause abrasions on the film. Plastic slips and doesn't grip. There are no projectors made now, or in the past, that have flat hard rollers that contact the full surface of a film. The flanged roller is engineered to keep the film in a straight line over the sound pick up. Since there are 3 kinds of flanged roller, the plastic substitute without rubber causes the sound to be misaligned over the sound pick up in many cases. If hard plastic rollers were the best way to make the rollers, Elmo would not have gone through the cost and extra expense to fit the CL with rubber rollers. Basically plastic rollers are a poor substitute for the proper part.
