Great. steady, helpful close-ups. Clear explanation. Just the right amount of humor and not a lot of extra talking. Refreshing to watch a well made tutorial.
I'm totally amazed how these machines were designed; so intricate, all the screws, gears, belts, diameters, the mathematics needed to calculate alignments and so on. The cams, the solenoids that detected positioning. Just amazing. Thank you Mr. Scarfe for your absolute expertise- there's a beauty to it.
This is a great video though. I have a 552 where the nylon gear is loaded with cracks, and..getting ready to order the replacement gear. I've worked on tons of 35mm projectors with worn assemblies, yet this will be my first dive into 16mm rebuilding. Thx and good luck.
Larry Urbanski of Urbanski Films in ILLINOIS has now reproduced three of the special Bell & Howell tools: Sprocket Timing Plate, Loop Restorer Tool, and Soundhead Positioning Tool.
Thanks for this excellent video, I have managed to replace the worm gear on my projector although it was a struggle to loosen it and the bearing off the shaft. I did find the 2 sprocket wheels needed alignment after I had reassembled, and I tested this buy winding film through by hand turning the wheel at the back of projector. I couldn't have tackled this without your video.
I've recently got my Bell & Howell 16mm Filmosound projector over the weekend and it was a Specialist model 552, it had the same design as this one, and it was a tube type unit. When I first got it, I turned it on, it loks fine, except it has problems, the sprocket gear and the reels are frozen. I took it apart and it had the original grease all turned to stone. I removed all of the old grease which has been sittin' around for decades, and cleaned the worm gear, but the worm gear looks fine with no cracks or chips at all. After that, it works fine with the sprocket wheels and the reels moves very well. In addition, another problem is that the Autoload feature won't go there. It was stuck when I tried to fix it and get it running. So I tried the film manually instead of auto threading. After that, it works fine.
How was the claw assembly? When the pull down claw assembly was removed, did we check the claws for wear? The wear would be at the base of each tooth where each tooth is pulling down the film. After awhile, the base of the tooth would experience a groove where the film is being pulled down. The picture will not be steady on the screen and have vertical jittering movement due to this wear. The claw assembly will have to be replaced.
