A short one today as my battle with Twentieth Century-Fox Cine Simplex camera sn. 105 rages on. The folks who designed this amazing camera went way out of their way to isolate as many things as possible from the housing of the camera to prevent noise and vibration from escaping the camera box. The components that drive the shutter, the sprocket, and the movement consist of four main parts. First in line is the sprocket drive gear box. Next, separated by an isolation coupling, is the gear box that drives the movement. That gear box also contains the isolation mount that turns the shutter. The shutter itself is housed on its own machined casting with an isolation coupling on its drive component that mates to the gear box that drives the movement.
The issue I am having, as I don’t have fixtures to set this up, is getting the two isolation mounts between the shutter and the movement gear box to be in perfect alignment. While I have everything running relatively smoothly, there is still a point as the shutter rotates where there is a little bit more friction than there should be. This is a problem because the motor wouldn’t see a constant load as it operates the camera, and an intermittent load would translate to a problem keeping the camera in sync. The battle here is, I have to remove a lot of components every time I think I have found part of the problem, adjusting what I think the problem is, and then reassembling everything. I will get there eventually.
