A complete guide to repair a slipping focus knob on an Eiki 16mm sound projector. Eiki SSL-0, SSL-OL, SL, ENT, SNT, and Xenon models all have the same issue with a slipping focus knob. Here is a relatively easy fix.
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? .
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!
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.
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.
