Lubricants for motion picture cameras.

[Gregg MacPherson]

The back story or motivation for this post is the three English Eclair ACL 400' mags that I had sitting here, unusable due to needing service. I don't know anyone left in NZ who knows how to survice them , so, with some research and care I decided to service them myself. I had the parts diagram but not the service manual. All went really well, except that I don't know what are appropriate lubricants for diffent parts.

 

I saw a post by Chuck Colburn where he stated the lubricants they used on all the cameras they serviced. looked like this:

 

Losoid.

-33B for movement gearing, Arri phenolic pull down claws, most lens rotating and sliuding surfaces.

 

-BBR-1 for ball bearings, fibre gearing.

 

- #70 for areas needing heavier lube.

 

I think those are all greases.

 

A good start, but not easy to find. So my question is, are there generic, readily available lubricants that will serve?

 

Cheers,

Gregg

[Chris Millar]

Ring up Stephen Spooner at Panavision AK - not sure if he does Eclair - but he'll certainly be able to help with your query... in the meantime I bet the usual suspects will turn up within an hour with loads of working solutions (maybe even literal ones )

[Gregg MacPherson]

Ring up Stephen Spooner at Panavision AK - not sure if he does Eclair - but he'll certainly be able to help with your query... in the meantime I bet the usual suspects will turn up within an hour with loads of working solutions (maybe even literal ones )

 

I had talked to Stephen before about servicing ACLs. He would have a go as a home job but was unfamiliar with them. I looked around for some service docs that wouyld help but didn't yet find any, just some parts drawings. From experience with other cameras I think he could guess generic lubricants for the different parts of the magazines. I was just a bit shy of ringing up the Panavisiuon techs too often every time I was stuck.

 

On my third magazine I am a bit faster, but it is still a lot of work to do a full dissassembly and lube. I realize now that my service guy from the 1980s never used to do all of this every time.

 

Thinking of easily availablr generic lubricants. The synthetic grease that my service tech used in the camera body in 1995 looks and feels just like the TF2 Lithium Grease from the local bike shop.

 

Cheers,

Gregg