I’ve had to put all other projects on hold for a week or so while I rebuild two more of the Fries 3×65 Imax-format camera movements. Still facing a few challenges to getting the movements back into good working order, but I will meet that challenge by sometime early next week. In the meantime, I wanted to share a brilliant conversion my friend Arnold Peterson and I came up with for MovieCam SuperAmerica magazines. For years, when the battery inside the magazine went dead, you had to disassemble the display panel, remove the circuit board, very carefully marking the circuit board connectors so you don’t reverse polarity (this can cause damage to the magazine and camera if done incorrectly), unsolder the battery, and solder in a replacement battery. The batteries of this era, when not on the camera and being charged, would only sit in storage for a year or so before they were no longer usable.
This just seemed like a foolish waste of technician time to me, so after several meetings with Arnie, we came up with this set of easily replaceable button cells that are mounted to the outside of the magazine for easy replacement. We also incorporated an on/off switch so, if the magazine is going to be in storage for a long time, you can simply disconnect the batteries from the magazine. Arnie came up with some ingenious circuitry to make this possible. The button cells should have a life expectancy of 2-3 years if left constantly on, and 3-5 years when turned off/disconnected. All of the MovieCam magazines I have in stock have been converted for this, and we can offer this conversion to anyone that has MovieCam magazines in their production package.
