Strong International
Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Omaha of Nebraska manufactures a wide variety of projection equipment for theater equipment dealers both in the U.S. and abroad. In the Omaha plant, Simplex, Century, and Ballantyne projection equipment is manufactured.
The projector plant is split into two halves; the Simplex plant
And the Century plant
All the machines that come out of the factory all start with an aluminum casting.
The castings are all made locally for Strong.
Aside from the castings, all the machines also start out with a movement. The movement parts are made by Lavezzi and assembled on site. After the movements have been assembled, they are run-in for a period of 24 hours.
Various parts of the machines are put together as assemblies, and will finally be mated to the casting.
After the major mechanical components have been installed, the machines are placed on soundheads and run in overnight.
The next morning, after the rest of the parts are installed, the gate and lens turret relationship is fine tuned with a special device to ensure focus uniformity.
On this screen, the turrets are aligned to make sure both lenses point the same direction. Picture stability and travel ghosting is also adjusted and optimized.
Here, Jerry Bigalo aligns the gate rollers, while some dweeb watches closely.;)
One of the few thing that have been changed to the Simplex projector over the years are the castings. Here is the old style casting with drainback holes.
And here is the current casting, without the holes, much to the dismay of some.
The Simplex line is also responsible for the manufacture of the 5star soundheads.
Now on to the Century line….
As all machines, the Century projector starts off as an aluminum casting.
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