International projectionist (Oct 1931-Sept 1933)

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8 INTERNATIONAL PROJECTIONIST July-August 1933 pair may call for nothing more than tightening up a set-screw. It may require replacing an exciter socket. Or, investigation may show that vibration of that projector is so serious that exciting lamps cannot be made to hold position, and overhaul of the projector head or the sound drive, or both, may be in order — to repair a mis-focused exciting lamp. One more example, before going on to other aspects of this question of permanent repairs. Consider the case, of slight scratchy noise, very slight, hardly noticeable, sounding like a dirty rheostat or a bit of wax in the sound aperture. Pounding panels or tugging at wires (after the audience is gone), will reveal the source of the trouble. That source may prove to be a poorly soldered connection ; some wire that was beginning to come loose and, if neglected, would have come loose entirely, stopping a show. In that case no pounding or tugging would reveal its location, but the circuits would have to be run down, laboriously, while an audience waited. Repair ? Possibly, after inspection, re-soldering half the connections in the equipment, just for a little scratchy noise. Economic Opportunities Now, the above examples show that slight troubles may require elaborate repairs, but they also show something else. The alert projectionist will have noticed that every one of the troubles mentioned really is an opportunity in disguise — an opportunity for improvement. The scratchy noise, plainly enough, was an opportunity to avoid a breakdown, and more than that, conferred an additional benefit by calling attention to the precarious condition of some of the soldered connections. The burnt-out tube at least indicated the desirability of using a less troublesome type of tube, with the possible further advantage that the new type might, or might not, prove less expensive. Beyond that it may have revealed an unstable condition in the equipment, causing tubes to burn out — a condition that might cause other and possibly more expensive parts to burn out; or, the burnt-out tube may have directed attention to dangerously defective regulation of the line voltage. Repairing the focus of the exciting lamp may have led to replacing an exciter socket that was about to cause noisy sound, or may have helped draw attention to a sound "attachment" gear in precarious condition. But, the opportunities to be found in the course of repairing trouble are not limited to improvements in related parts of the equipment alone; often Yager Honored George A. Yager, business representative of Salt Lake City projectionist local union 250 and a frequent contributor to these columns, has been appointed reemployment director for Utah by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins under the provisions of the National Recovery Act. Yager, who is the only I. A. man thus honored, is also president of the Salt Lake Federation of Labor, secretary of the Utah State Federation, and chairman of the Health and Safety Committee, Projection Advisory Council. they are also economic opportunities. Any repair opens the question of whether it would not be less expensive in the long run to replace the damaged equipment with new apparatus of an improved type, rather han repair the old; or, to take the other side, if improved models of the particular part in question do not exist, whether it would not be more economical and involve no greater net risk to the show, to replace the damaged part with another, no better but less expensive. Thus, in the case of the burnt-out tube, suppose that no heavy filament tube of that particular type is available, and the risk of tubes burning out from time to time cannot by any means be avoided? In that case, why not use a cheaper tube? If the show is going to stop for twenty or thirty seconds anyhow, every so often, while tubes of that type are replaced, will it matter much whether those interruptions occur twice a month or only twice in two months ? Will the difference be worth the difference in cost? Of course, in such case a great number of other questions arise; for example, will the less expensive tube be more likely to endanger other portions of the equipment? All the foregoing does no more than illustrate two general rules which are helpful in all repair work: (1) that even slight troubles sometimes involve very elaborate repairs before the repair job can be considered complete, and (2) that nearly every trouble is an opportunity in disguise, but an opportunity which will vary according to the nature of the trouble and to the circumstances of the theatre in which it occurs. In a previous article of this series the question of temporary repairs was discussed, and it will be remembered that temporary repairs were found to be any expedient that would restore the show to the audience with the shortest possible lapse of time, leaving permanent adjustments to wait until later. The permanent adjustment. then, is one which leaves the equipment not merely in good condition, but in the best possible condition, according to whatever opportunities for improvement or economy the trouble may have suggested ; but above all, the permanent adjustment is one in which ^ every practicable precaution has been " taken to prevent a recurrence of the same trouble. Equipment for Repairs Equipment for effecting repairs on the broad and permanent basis indicated above may be divided into three categories : sources of information, equipment for making repairs, and equipment for testing repairs. Sources of information have been discussed previously in this series, so far as drawings, blue-prints or specifications of equipment were concerned. The handiest local source of sound technical advice is the local radio man. The projectionist may have occasion to repair an amplifier once in six months. The radio repair man works on amplifiers with nearly the same frequency that the projectionist threads up film. They are pretty much the same amplifiers. They are complicated, for the most part, by radio tuning de W vices that have no counterpart in the projection room, and they lack many of the refinements with which projectionists are familiar in sound equipment; nevertheless, the local radio man, if he does any quantity of repairing at all, is thoroughly familiar with transformers, condensers, choke coils, resistors, filter circuits, coupling circuits and most of the other circuits and equipment that go to make up a theatre sound system. Moreover, he owns a stock of replacement parts, some of which can be used in case of emergency in the theatre, and he is or should be competent to select suitable emergency parts. The local radio man does noi, in most cases, have the projectionists 's familiarity with details of theatre equipment and he cannot be expected to understand the requirements of theatre work. Alone in a projection room, most radio men would be help ((0 less, or nearly so. In alliance with a competent projectionist, the local radio man may be of the greatest help; it should be worth while to cultivate his acquaintance. Not the least of the reasons for enlisting the aid of a qualified radio technician is that, if he does any quantity of repairing at all, he will own expensive test equipment that can be useful in a theatre at all times, and may be invaluable in case of a breakdown. The theatre, of course, should have