Years ago, I was in the model railroad hobby. One of the things they had was an oil just for plastics. I think, it was called LaBelle oil. I still have some. It seemed to work without damaging plastics. Keep up the good work Dave, I've learned so much from your videos.
20:45 Indeed, Grundig used a similar system in their first generation VHS VCR's (and in their previous V-2000 ones), and Philips developed the Charly mechanism that resembles the loading of the Sony Betamax 711 chassis.
The mechanism of Philips Video2000 machines are really well designed and reliable (but rumors say their electronics is not so much, I had no problems with the ones in my collection though, maybe I was just lucky). I'm not familiar with the Grundig VHS mechanism you mentioned, but the Philips Charly VHS mechanism is utter garbage. Maybe they were reliable in their first 5-10 years, but when they started to show up on my bench, they were full of broken and brittle plastic parts. The pinch roller attached to that separate, straight gear rack is one of the worst part of it, and the full plastic cassette loader that breaks to tiny pieces... I understand they were not designed to last 30+ years, but none of the VCRs were, and despite that somehow most of them can be kept operational with some maintenance even after 40 years, with the exception of Philips Charly and some other models (Funai, Sony and Aiwa used a mechanism I can't remember the name of, it has a brushed capstan motor and about 5 belts, the price of the belt set now exceeds the value of the machines, plus they are full of brittle, yellowed gears, Dave showed one of them with broken gears on this channel a few years ago, IIRC it was a multisystem Aiwa). An other thing I hate is the '90s VHS line of Philips, the mechanism is very reliable, but their head drum has a sleeve bearing! Only Philips came up with this 'brilliant' idea, and you can't even take the drum apart to relube it, because it is held together with a special compression ring which needs a custom Philips jig for removal...
One of the last shops surviving in our town sold a lot of VM32's. These had a common problem with the lower drum area wearing and making the tape stick on rewind and fast forward. They couldn't figure out the problem and sent them over to my shop.
This was the first ever Betamax player I repaired, which came into the testing shop at my thrift store, I believe I sent you that vid. It had a belt that liquified, and it was surprisingly simple to repair. It did struggle to rewind, though. When it was placed on the sales floor, along with two Sony Betamax players, all three sold like hot cakes.
This is the last betamax chassis made by Toshiba. The original loading design is the same of the Sony betamax B chassis. This toshiba chassis suffer of worm plstic gear breakage. The upper drum is the last one improved by Toshiba, to avoid the common failure of worn alloy material.
20:50 Grundig and Philips actually made VHS machines that used the U-loading system. The Philips one is known as the "Charlie mechanism". I have a Grundig VS-310 which loads the tape like a Sony 711 chassis. They are cool to watch them work but unreliable...
I can well remember the Charlie mechanism, it worked well until it went into self destruction, then you nnded the repair kit and manual to get all the timing correct or it did the same again
There was nothing stopping anyone from using U loading except possibly a license to Sony as that was their design from the umatic days. Jvc gave away the vhs m loading system so anyone could use it.
@@Barbarapape I still have nightmares from the few Philips Charly VCRs I worked on 20 years ago. I bought one last year just to make a video about it. Full of broken plastic parts, the cassette loader is cracked to a million pieces on its own, just from the shrinking of aging plastic. Philips made great VCRs in their V2000 days, but after that, their VCR line went downhill, starting with Charly, later in the '90s they made a really reliable VHS mechanism, but they had the 'brilliant' idea to put sleeve bearing in the head drum, and make it impossible to disassemble without a mostly unobtainable jig that was needed to open the special compression ring that held the drum together... I think that jig was not even official, because the head drum was meant to be replaced as a whole unit with the lower drum, but that was way too expensive so a third party came up with that tool and sold upper drums separately, maybe it was König or Classic. It is really upsetting when you have a perfect head drum but it's rattling because the oil seeped out of the bearing. There are three conical holes on the top of the upper drum that might be for oiling, but when I tried, the oil ended up in the rotary transformer and on the tape...
@@mrnmrn1 Yeah no one liked the Charlie deck, they were left on the repair rack until it was the last job left, then you got out the swear box. The plastic was not of good quality, hence why most went into self destruct. Philips had a habbit of making poor mechanisms that were far too complicated.
@@Barbarapape (IIRC the name of the mechanism is spelled Charly and not Charlie) Their Video2000 mechanisms were simple and reliable, and most of their cassette mechanisms too, even the ones which were almost entirely made of plastic, the base included. They had issues with desintegrating soft polyurethane gears, but the same happened to Grundig and even Technics.
Amazing that some of this 40 year old equipment is still around... I wonder how many bluray players will be around 40 years from now? I imagine not many.
I bet there will be many and they will probably still be making them. Bluray is the most permanent storage media we have. As long as you don't scratch the crap out of the discs they will last longer than you will.
@@12voltvids Yes, hopefully, they will keep making them, I have a couple of old ones that fell out of software support that won't play all my discs now due to changes in the software. Don't know if that is going to be an issue going forward. also, laser pickups will no doubt fail and eventually, parts will become unavailable.
@@12voltvids Oh, so the shaft has a flat side on its whole length? That's the only way I can imagine why not the cracked gear nor the cracked pulley rotated freely on it. But the pulley is not supposed to slide on the shaft I guess, so it could have been glued on.
No, its not keyed. It was designed as a press fit so that at end of travel it will allow some slippage. Otherwise it will bind and break. The reason you hear the noise is the ridge on the edge has over use worn down and you hear it rubbing the teeth of the gear. When it was new it was large enough to not rub. That ridge is there to prevent it from spinning the worm gear right off the intermediate gear.
@@12voltvids Then I don't get it, again. If it's a round shaft, how the cracked gear and cracked pulley doesn't rotate on it freely? The loading mechanism runs THAT freely? I understand it needs a clutch because worm gear drives have so much torque it could tear apart the whole loading mechanism otherwise if it gets stuck, but using a press-fit plastic gear on a round shaft as a clutch sounds like a silly idea. I would guess they expected the belt to slip in an overload situation, and not the press-fit worm gear to rotate on the shaft. Allowing longitudinal movement for the worm gear is probably a good idea to reduce the impact as the mechanism hits the end of travel, but then I would expect a keyed shaft to prevent the gear rotating on it.
when I was small our first VCR was a white Sony Betamax with green LED display and it was quite shallow in height and had frontloading. Know which type of machine that was ? edit: I googled. It could've been an SL-2300
@@12voltvids I don't think it was Stereo. I remember being it bright glossy finished white. It kinda look as the 2400 but as far as my memory goes, not exactly
