Wednesday 18 August 2010

Kodacolor & Projector

Howdy all. It's been a while but, like Kyle's cousin 'I'm baaaack'! So to business.

Was lucky enough to get in touch with someone who had drawn a spec for a Kodacolor filter based on one he'd seen for use with an Ampro (most unusual). I wasn't entirely convinced for various technical reasons but thought I'd give it a go. And it almost worked! I'm convinced the reasons it didn't work were 1) the spec didn't allow for the black spaces between the colour strips and I can only conclude that these are as critical as I thought they were and 2) HAVE YOU EVER TRIED CUTTING SOMETHING TO WITHIN THREE DECIMAL PLACES OF AN INCH?!! That really wasn't f**king easy and I sure wasn't 100% there with that! I've got two options now, either get in touch with someone who has one and take some readings with the calipers (working on it) or find and buy an original (quite rare and often a bit pricey).

As for the second thing I'm a bit reluctant to post it because it makes me look like an utter wally but since it's been so long since I posted I guess you all deserve a treat so have a laugh at my expense. We've got this big film weekend going down at the Trust in October and one of the things we want to do is have interactive displays. So I dug out an old Norris 9.5 projector I knew we had which is equipped with a motor and a handle. The puzzling thing was there was no way to switch off the motor yet keep the light on so why the handle. I then realised the motor was providing fan cooling to the lamphouse but reasoned it must be rigged to turn when the handle does (duh! This is very incorrect for so many reasons and as such is absolutely stupid!) So I had another look today to see how difficult it would be to fit a switch. No problem at all but then one of the other guys said 'well why don't you just take the motor belt off, it's got a voltage control knob so under-volt it a little to compensate for the lack of load and hey presto! Fan cooling and handle operation!'

DUH! DUH! DUH! ERRRRR, BRAAAAAAIN, WHERE ARE YOU? DUUUUUUH!

Talk about trying to create work for yourself. WHY didn't I think of that, SO obvious! If you go around trying to find much more complicated solutions to problems than necessary then you will certainly find that:

Nothing's ever f**king easy!

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