Random photos, comics, etc.

[Randy Stankey]

Just a fun fact: You can make sodium carbonate from sodium bicarbonate by heating. Put some baking soda in a shallow, glass container and heat it in the oven at 100º C for about an hour. The stuff will bubble and release carbon dioxide plus water vapor as it decomposes. When it's done, you'll be left with sodium carbonate.

You can also find sodium carbonate in the grocery store. It is often sold as coffee pot cleaner. If you decide to try it, be sure to read the ingredients on the label. Sometimes, companies put in other stuff.

[Leo Enticknap]

You probably could have put them through a dishwasher, using regular dishwasher detergent. Fail that, lye and hot water would be the next thing to try.

It boils down to what is possible within the constraints of a service call, and what isn't. I have what I call my "Barco wet kit." This is a bucket containing the bits and pieces needed for a coolant flush described here, plus a large kitty litter tray (don't worry: not one that was ever used for its intended purpose!) and a jar of sodium bicarbonate / baking soda for washing Series 2/3 and 4 air filters. On this particular day, my call instructions were to replace a failed Enigma board at a site that is a 180-mile drive away, not one of our service contact sites, and that we do not do regular one-time calls to. In fact, this was the first and so far only time I've been there. So the wet kit did not go in the trunk of the car that morning.

When I got there, I found that the card cage air filter was the worst I'd ever encountered, and by a big margin. I had to do something to it, or else the replacement Enigma would likely have overheated and died again. A large sink and some dish soap was the best thing I and the site manager could come up with, within the constraints of the budgeted time on site and what was available.

Be careful! If any parts of the filters are made from aluminum, you don't want to use anything that is strongly alkaline.

I guess they must be steel mesh, then, because this is how Barco tells you to clean them:

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[Randy Stankey]

I...I discovered that the layer of goo on the outward facing side was so bad that even after two hours of full immersion in a sink of warm water and dish soap. ...

You probably could have put them through a dishwasher, using regular dishwasher detergent. Fail that, lye and hot water would be the next thing to try.

Be careful! If any parts of the filters are made from aluminum, you don't want to use anything that is strongly alkaline. Sodium hydroxide will corrode anything made from aluminum, quite quickly.

[Leo Enticknap]

I was once sent to an 8-plex owned by a small chain that was a long way (as in, hundreds of miles) from their other sites and main offices, and in a pretty remote location in general. This was a one time emergency call, and not one of our service contracts or regular customers. There were DP2K-15Cs and 20Cs for all the screens. In the center of the single gallery booth, next to the staircase that provided access to it, was the shaft for a dumb waiter that had been used to move film prints up and down back in the 35mm days. The elevator car, mechanism, and doors had been removed, and all that remained was the empty shaft.

The bottom end of the shaft opened out into the back of the concessions stand, right next to the popper, which explained the overpowering smell of popcorn in the booth. It also explained why I simply couldn't pull out the Enigma board that had failed from the projector's card cage. I had to lever it with a screwdriver, because the faceplate had become sealed solid to its mating surfaces on the card cage with popcorn oily goo. Even the outer fairing was a struggle to pull off. Pretty much every single surface in that booth felt slightly sticky or tacky. After using the TMS computer's keyboard to find out the IP addresses of everything, there were yellow marks on my fingers, and I could see my fingerprints on the keys. The projectors' lenses had an additional coating on them that wasn't put there by any optical factory either, which must have significantly affected the light level and color balance.

I needed a large, chunky pair of pliers on the tab to get the card cage air filter out. After doing so, I discovered that the layer of goo on the outward facing side was so bad that even after two hours of full immersion in a sink of warm water and dish soap (I didn't have any baking soda with me, which is what Barco recommend is used to clean those filters), barely any progress had been made on softening and loosening it. I suspect that the Enigma board died because it had overheated and cooked.

I recommended in my service call report that the entire booth needed a deep clean, including all the projectors and every other device that moved air through it, or else it was a question of when rather than if further equipment failures would follow. My impression was that no planned maintenance had been done for many years previously beyond lamp replacements (and even then, some of the lamps were hundreds of hours overdue for replacement, unless whoever replaced them had failed to record it in the software). That call was an object lesson on just how much damage popcorn oil in the atmosphere can cause if it gets into the booth.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Yep! That's very true Jim... one customer used to exhaust his poppers outside over the entry doors. Said he also had gobs of people come in just wanting to buy the popcorn. I also had customers that didn't vent their poppers. At one location if they left the booth door open, the first projector in line sucked all the grease in. When we installed his first Series 1 Christie, and I went back six months later, the CP2000 lamphouse sucked it all in... So much so that it was dripping off some parts of the lamphouse. Tearing that all down.and cleaning it took half a day. Luckily, the grease did not get in to the integrator or light engine.

[Jim Cassedy]

It's no secret that the smell of freshly popped corn in the lobby stimulates sales
of same. I'm not sure who first realized this fact, but it was known as far back as
January 1918, when this article appeared in POPULAR MECHANICS:

PopcornFanPM011918.jpg

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Some times Ithink it's better to have replacable filters on the rack itself, so Customers can change their own filters. But no one wanted to pay for them. instead they got stuck paying Technician time to come clean out amplifiers and power supplies on site at 20X the price.

[Leo Enticknap]

I recently had to do a rack full of MX1500s that had gotten so bad that the theater owner was complaining of a burning smell coming from the rack. It was just dust/goo/crud that had been sucked into the amps over a 25-year period, and incredibly, they were all absolutely fine after a thorough internal clean and some DeOxit on the gain pots. Despite the age of the amps and that the B-chain hadn't been touched likely since the place converted to digital (at which point the audio system wasn't replaced: they added a Doremi D to A to the existing CP65), I only needed to make very slight adjustments to get everything to reference.

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[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Not taken on 126 film, even though it's almost a square pic...

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No mystery as to why this DSS220 was spontaneously shutting itself down! The fans were so clogged that two had stopped rotating, and one had totally burned out. Apparently it had been running continuously since its installation in 2012, and had likely never been shut down until it did so involuntarily a few days ago.

This pic was taken after an initial blast with the Datavac. When I opened the lid of the case, there was a think layer of dust and goo, such that it was impossible to see what color the motherboard is. I wish I'd taken the photo then for shock value, but it didn't occur to me until I was about to go to work on the fans and heatsink.

I used to see this dust buildup in QSC Cinema Amplifiers of all models in theaters in Nevada and Southern Utah. The dust would literally clog the heatsinks in about 5 years time causing the amplifiers to cycle off and back on. Nothing like spending a day removing amps, cleaning them out, reinstalling them, checking levels, etc.

[Frank Cox]

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..........

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

I don't think so: it's in a Bel-Air Circuit residence theater.

Thought it may have still been one I did, but I don't recall doing any 220's, just 200's. Might have been a replacement for one my old 200's though, been so long since I worked the Bel Aire circuit.

[Leo Enticknap]

In reference to the power outages that sent all of Spain and Portugal dark for a day, and many parts of it for a lot longer:


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[Leo Enticknap]

I don't think so: it's in a Bel-Air Circuit residence theater.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Not taken on 126 film, even though it's almost a square pic...

image.png

No mystery as to why this DSS220 was spontaneously shutting itself down! The fans were so clogged that two had stopped rotating, and one had totally burned out. Apparently it had been running continuously since its installation in 2012, and had likely never been shut down until it did so involuntarily a few days ago.

This pic was taken after an initial blast with the Datavac. When I opened the lid of the case, there was a think layer of dust and goo, such that it was impossible to see what color the motherboard is. I wish I'd taken the photo then for shock value, but it didn't occur to me until I was about to go to work on the fans and heatsink.

Was this at a certain room we both know of? That booth never got shut down and dust was an issue...

[Leo Enticknap]

Not taken on 126 film, even though it's almost a square pic...

image.png

No mystery as to why this DSS220 was spontaneously shutting itself down! The fans were so clogged that two had stopped rotating, and one had totally burned out. Apparently it had been running continuously since its installation in 2012, and had likely never been shut down until it did so involuntarily a few days ago.

This pic was taken after an initial blast with the Datavac. When I opened the lid of the case, there was a think layer of dust and goo, such that it was impossible to see what color the motherboard is. I wish I'd taken the photo then for shock value, but it didn't occur to me until I was about to go to work on the fans and heatsink.