Normally, mechanical devices like record players move smoothly, with well-greased contact surfaces enabling the tone arm to automatically move, the multi-record mechanism to drop down a fresh disc, and the listener to have a generally good time. Unfortunately, the 1972-era ITT KP821 record player that [Mark] got recently handed by a friend wasn’t doing a lot of moving, with every part of the mechanism seemingly frozen in place, though the current owner wasn’t certain that they were doing something wrong.
More after the break…
Fortunately, this record player was in exceptionally good condition.. The primary failure was that the BSR record player mechanism, with its many touching metal surfaces, was suffering from a bad case of solidified grease. Although this is easily fixed with some IPA and a lot of elbow grease, the biggest trick with these mechanisms is putting it back together after cleaning, with many seemingly randomly shaped parts and every single E-clip that the manufacturer could design for and source at the time.
With that complete, this just left some pot cleaning and replacing a busted fuse in the amplifier section. The selenium rectifier was still functional, as were the SGS TAA621AX1 audio amplifier ICs. Despite the age of this ‘portable’ record player, both its BSR mechanism and the twin speakers that are part of the record player are in remarkably good condition. Much like with a car, it seems that you just have to swap out the liquid-y elements before they turn into a solid.
Good to see this kind of problem getting attention. These kind of grease related problems are nothing new but are easily overlooked if you are not aware of it. And it happens in all sorts of mechanical devices not only record players. The video shows nicely a method of how this can be easily solved and I’m sure this will inspire many people for future similar repairs.
Perhaps Hackaday can make a service/repair corner. In the spirit of the frequently mentioned “right to repair”, Hackaday could perhaps create a page that allows for easy searching within the articles (other than searching for a word in the headline alone) so that people who are searching for a particular problem might find a similar problem with a practical solution. Just a thought, an idea inspired by the highly inadequate current Hackaday search function, which sometimes more feels like a Nilfisk (a neat way of saying that it really sucks).
Such a section would also be an amazing resource for repair cafe volunteers.
Repair-A-Day corner? That’s a RAD idea!
In about 1710 the world’s most accurate clock was made largely due to the fact that it was unlubricated except that it used naturally oily woods from the tropics rather than man made lubricants.
I have a really nice autoreversing walkman, only slightly larger than the cassette itself, who’se grease has solidified. I really want to get it going again. But man, is its mechanism complex. I have watches that are less conplex. :/
Wow. Walkman! That’s really old school. I had one and miss it dearly. The familiar all yellow chassis and rubber covered everything. Phenomenal sound, even by today’s standards. Imo
Selenium rectifiers are subject to be replaced as preventative maintenance, but it’s not as bad as with electrolytics or the Rifa filters.
I don’t have 46 minutes of patience for this video, but I did see the epoxy mixing @42:35. Yes, uneven extraction of those tubes is a nuisance. Separating and discarding a bit of the unmixed epoxy is better then making an unequal mix. Especially if you know in advance you squeezed out a bit too much. Just make a visual volume estimate and brush some unmixed epoxy to the side of your paper.
Sometimes I use a scale if I’m mixing a tiny dab. Helps that I already have a microgram scale. Useful for a lot of purposes and dirt cheap these days.
P. S. I assumed both parts are a similar density, would be annoying to mix if they weren’t.
Back in the day, When I worked in the repair business, we used to refer to this as the Garrrard syndrome As in gaarrrard record players. BSR came from the same country. (Britain) . They actually call there grease paraffin. It is oil mixed with paraffin wax. When the oil evaporates. only the wax is left behind . Which then burns and hardens. The record players would pour into the shop just before Christmas . I don’t know how many hundred we repaired over the years. The stuff would sometimes get so hard. we would have to heat up the parts with a soldering gun to get them apart.
Whenever I get a British turntable to work on, I automatically assume i will need to get out the big soldering gun out to melt the grease. The old grease seems to have a consistency of cured rubber cement.
I had the same problem with an old – albeit much younger than that BSR deck – Baygen FPR2 clockwork radio. A co-worker was throwing it out because it no longer worked, and all that was wrong was the grease on the gear shafts had gone like half-set glue. A good clean and a bit of fresh stuff had it up running again… sometimes the line from all those eBay listings – “could be a simple fix” – turns out to be true!
As a footnote, the spring doesn’t get used a lot these days since I replaced the puny 1.5V solar panel with an identically-sized 5V one from Aliexpress. Now you can sit it on a window ledge in normal daylight and it plays happily without any winding required at all.
Modern watch lubricants have solved this problem. At least from my reading. They don’t harden with age (which would cause the amount of friction to change with obvious detrimental effects) they just evaporate to nothing.
Service interval for mechanical watches used to be 3 years and is now 10, at least for the omegas I looked into. Less cleaning of old funk, better lubricants. Love that archaic tech is still pushing boundaries.
The 3 year service interval some apply to Rolex is the modern equivalent of giving your cars 6 month oil changes.
Rolex also recommends 10 years now, shortening to 5 years as the watch ages. Still a watch like a record player will probably tell you if you’re leaving it too late (poor timekeeping and poor playback).
Difference I suppose is most people will get a Rolex cleaned, water tightness checked and time keeping checked every year or two.
I’m finding that the better grades of synthetic greases for bicycles and marine winches don’t seem to harden like the olde greases of yore.
Came into possesion of a wind-up phonograph, clockworks frozen with solidified grease. A few drops of CLP liquified everything, the goo ran out, and after a few iterations, I added fresh lubricant. The gears now spin as free as a top.
What is CLP? Clear Liquid Petroleum?
Cleaner Lubricant Preservativd
Is isopropyl alcohol a reasonable solvent for grease? I’ve never found it to be much use – very slow acting, despite being nominally miscible.
Naptha works wonders though.
(lubricating) “grease” is a combination of a “soap” and oil. The oil does the lubrication, while the soap provides the stiffness so it does not run or leak away. And there are at least 6 different soap types in common use (Calcium and lithium soaps are very common).
And different types of grease need different solvents. Both “break cleaner” and regular diesel are commonly used solvent for grease.
I once tried to clean up hardened grease from a sowing machine with WD40, but that did not work very well. But WD40 does work with some types of grease. You just have to try which combination works.
‘brake’, not ‘break’
There is a product out there for this purpose called “break-free”. But I know where you are coming from.
Back when I was doing audio repairs, I used a combination of carburetor cleaner and methanol / denatured alcohol.
Varsol works pretty good on hardened grease. I wouldn’t myself use carburetter cleaner; it can damage or mar some plastics.
I’ve freed up some “stuck” mechanisms (eg bicycle gear shifter) with light machine oil, but if they really need grease for long-term use, you still have to disassemble, clean and regrease them.