Old sticky oil ... Kerosene ... a drop or two of kerosene against the edge of old oil stuck parts will break the oil up and un-stick them. Oddly enough a lot of old equipment that ran gear-sets in oil baths (monarch lathes for example) were actually specified out to be cleaned every X hours with kerosene and it really does do an amazing job at removing old gummy oil.
If I tried to reassemble that, knowing that it was a calculator, the result of adding 1+1 would be... thousands of small metal parts flying across the room at tremendous speed.
@@atkelar But seriously - how do you get all these parts together in the right order? There must be hundreds of, say, tiny screws and washers, all minutely different for some important reason.
Without a proper construction drawing, it's a bit like a 3D jigsaw puzzle: most pieces will fit only one way, just becuase they are slightly different. Washers usually are also not strictly required, so those tend to be in the "whoops, left over parts" pile mostly. And for anything else: ther's the video and some pics on the phone to compare against. I find it easy enough that way.
Great, thanks! I was trying to disassemble similar device in my childhood for curiosity - no luck ;) and fir sure I would never be able make it again ;)
Thank you for showing the whole process. I really admire your knowledge and work! My machine is also stuck but for now I don't have the courage to take apart more than the outer covers :-(
It is certainly a bit of a challenge. There are quite a few bits that could cause the mechanism to get stuck, so I don't dare to give advise over comments. Carefully poking at individual levers and see which ones are under tension and maybe looking against the gears to see if all are properly meshed or not....
@@atkelar Thanks for the tips - you are very kind. I will work on the device slowly over the next months, step by step until I master the components. The device is very beautiful, a real marvel of mechanics. Therefore I will not be dissatisfied if I do not repair it, just to preserve all the components.
Update: I managed to get the device unstuck by removing the carriage and putting the mechanism in zero position by hand. To remove the carriage when stocked, force should be applied for lifting it from the pegs. It's not a pleasant operation, but I think it's the only option. I partially repaired the device by washing the metal parts in gasoline and then lubricating them. The device now adds and subtracts successfully. The lower part (carriage) is still not working as the lever does not reset the counters and the bell does not ring. Nothing appears to be damaged except that the crank shaft is not transmitting the rotation further. In the coming weeks I will tackle the bottom part. Besides showing your amazing skill and knowledge, your videos are precious material to anyone who owns such a device. Thank you so much!!!
Thanks! I'm glad to hear you are making progress! All of the lockouts in the drive train are good to prevent a stuck mechanism when everything works, but may easily lead to a stuck situation if one of them is even slightly off. The "reset" in the carriage is a two-step thing: for one, there's the actual axle that drives the motion. This needs to be rotated 360° and will "collect" any non-zero digit along the way. But to make sure that it doesn't interfere with normal rotation, it needs to be "shifted over" by about half the width of a digit first. It's a bit like a key that needs to align correctly. By the description, either the movement is off or the rotation is. Oh, my model has a "prevent clearing" switch for both the left and right hand side. These will prevent the axles from moving over and thus they just spin without effect. Are you sure these are in the correct position? And then: the bell is struck by the "carry notch" on the most significant digit. So every time it turns from 9 to 0 (or back again) instead of turning a wheel, it will move a spring loaded lever that will strike the bell when released. This is a bit fiddly to adjust, because if the distance between the striker and bell is too little, it will stay connected and thus dampen the sound. If it is too far away, it will not reach the bell... I can see why that would be off in an unmaintained unit.
@@atkelar Thanks a lot for the additional information. It is a great feeling to find a person who has a vast knowledge and who generously shares it with others! With my last message my only intention was to send you feedback. Especially thank you for the explanation about the operation of the carriage mechanism and the tips for repairing the reset function. I'll read your text while I'm in front of the machine and try to figure out why the reset doesn't work - you gave me instructions on what to look out for (clean prevent switch - don't know which one is, that may be the problem). Thank you also for the explanations about the bell - I'll deal with that at the end. I will let you know if I make any further progress. Fun fact: this machine "infected" me :-), so yesterday I bought another one I found on an ad: a Trinks Brunswinga B model from the 20s. It was also jammed, but I easily got it out by straightening one crooked tooth (it wasn't parallel to the shaft). I also washed that mechanism in gasoline and oiled it. So the addition and multiplication functions work great and the device really looks wonderful! Tip for others: The older machine is simpler than the modern one is, so it is easier to understand how it works. So it is easier to repair a device from the 20s than this one from the 50s. Therefore, the "learner" should start with older machine.
Wow! I tried that with a cheap Soviet "FELIKS M", and failed miserably.😢 Since then, all I do is soak in WD40 for a few days, clean the assembled mechanisms with medium-soft brushes, and lubricate with acid-free & non-sticky sewing machine oil. Seems to do the trick very nicely!
At 9:53 I think is made of antimony not tin. Tin is too soft, if it broke is probably antimony or antimony tin alloy. I loved the cordless impact driver by the way. On the mechanical things you fixed, apart from that camera lens with a lot of tiny parts and a timer too, this is one of the more complex restorations.
I am no metal expert... when I say "tin", I use it in a slang way more than an actual technical way. But the casting was really brittle; I doubt that the arm would have survived any means of bold removal, not just my pliars approach 😊
@@atkelar Luckily it doesn't look like you're suffering zinc pest; all the alloy castings appear to be the correct size still. However, yes. Fifties post-war pot metal leaves a lot to be desired when disassembly is concerned.
Today I am a little ADD, and I had to come back several times. But I have a Facit that I love: I waited months for one in good state to appear and the delivery costed more than itself (i think was 6 or 7Kg).
Oh! A nice one indeed! I would think that it uses a similar overall mechanism for the actual counting, even though the operational elements are quite different.
@@atkelar I think is a little posterior to this one: it has keys instead of sliding lids. Keys in a weird order in fact, probably dictated by the mechanisms. This is the main difference. I saw a picture of a German one on a commemorative book about BASF that was similar but to subtract you added module 10 numbers: so each sliding lid had the reversed numbers in red to add for subtraction because the mechanism probably only rotated in one direction. The cleverness of it fascinated me.
@@atkelarActually: Yes. A FACIT has keys for input, but each key simply moves a pinwheel to its specific numeric position...so the rest of it is like a normal pinwheel calculator. Love my FACIT NTK. As my WALTHERs and BRUNVIGAS.
The exact time is a bit hard to tell, since the process spanned several months in real time. The first part of the disassembly with the green cutting mat took about 5 hours alone... so... several days? 🤔
The videos and lots of pictures help for the finer details, like washers. But overall: it's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle: find the corner pieces and see what fits to them until nothing is left 😜
