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One Weakness of Early Eyemo and Fresh Replacement Parts


Simon Wyss

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To the repair people:

The 1925 Eyemo 71 design has a clutch spring between main spring hub shaft and first gear, to be preciser a helicoidal spring made from round wire with an axially protruding leg that sits in a bore of that gear. The leg can break off. In such a case nothing holds the main drive spring so that it unleashes instantly. I am having a 71-A here with this damage. What happens next is that one of the stop mechanism gears, it sits on the main drive hub shaft, will pound onto the other with the full energy of the drive spring. So the stop mesh is no longer there. Also, the main spring may unhook from the hub shaft.

It is difficult to buy replacement parts from the remainders of Bell & Howell stocks. Nobody at MPE knows the camera. Parts can be sold only by the civilian numbers. I have the military parts list, not useful. The civilian parts list is not given out. So the replacement of the stop gears can become cumbersome although you describe the parts exactly.

Since I didn’t want to fool around with the MPE people I decided to have fresh clutch springs made. They arrived Friday, the Eyemo is back to life now. The stop mechanism is dysfunctional but else the camera can be used. I have a couple dozens of springs. Interested parties may buy from me, CHF 10 each, net. Mind you that younger models, I don’t know from which serial number on though, have two shorter mirror-inverted legged coil springs. Bell & Howell had to improve the construction.

May many Eyemo users use their Eyemos. I love these noisy automatic cine cameras and I love to retrieve the savoir-faire from the twenties.

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Have found the register of this camera too long. Bell & Howell’s specification is 1.5 inches plus or minus 0.0005. That is 38,1 mm but my measurements revealed 38,4 mm. The camera was sold that way!

So we machined 0,3 mm down to have 38,09 mm now, aperture plate screwed on. The head of the underlying release anchor trip nut screw I had to grind shorter as well.

Remaining problem is only to find lenses that have an [A] or [B] mount. They weren’t marked as such, only from model 71-C on the mount barrels were engraved with a C. The difference lies solely in the rotational orientation of the cameras’ guide prong and thus the position of the index mark. Additionally, nothing younger than 1939 will fit a 71-A, -B or -C.

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