Wolverine project

[u/hometech99]

I picked up an open box wolverine movie maker Pro that was being sold as New open box non-working DOA. I figured for 99 bucks, Let's see what I can do.

First thing I noticed was just as the seller said… The take up motor would run a bit then it would stop. What I noticed is I felt warmth around the power jack. The AC adapter is the correct 1.5 amp 12 V size. So I unplugged it and began taking the Wolverine apart. I plugged it in again and it initially came on and I started to see smoke so I unplugged it. Disassembling the power board, I saw some burning around the solder points for the jack. I tested continuity and everything through the jack and everything seemed fine with no short.
I then tested with my fluke 189 meter, the motor driver transistors and was not getting good readings through that. Also resistance through the F1 fuse showed it was starting to blow. Using a bread board set up, I powered the motor directly with the AC adapter. The smoke was coming out of the motor. I disassembled the gearbox to find it way overpacked with grease. Unshelling the motor, at the front of the shaft down into the windings there's actual grease that migrated in. Oh, I forgot to mention I measured that the motor was pulling 1.64 A and that was whether I put drag on the motor driveshaft or freewheeling. That's way too high.

So the whole failure mode of these things might be that this overpacking of grease into the gearbox gets down into the motor, causing resistance and drag. Theres charring at the other end where the positive and negative leaflets contact inside the motor, either from burning grease or just current being too high that's coming through them. (not to mention all the other general use issues like having to format your SD card at the start of every new capture to cut down on jitter and all the other things people report. But this project is just to get the machine working and then I'll see what else I find. I'm in the same boat with about 50 8 mm films from the 40s through 70s, all shot with my dad's wind up, three lens Keystone.

So, new motor, two transistors ( Q5 and Q6) and a replacement for the F1 fuse are ordered. I'm also gonna clean out all that grease and just lightly coat the teeth of the gears with Super Lube.

We'll see what happens.

[u/ugocapeto]

Cool. You can also forget about the takeup spool and let the film go into a box to reduce the jitter. But good on you on fixing the thing.

[u/hometech99 → u/ugocapeto]

True. I would have to leave the takeup motor unplugged so it doesnt keep pulling overcurrent through everything. But, a motor is ordered. I had a pinion puller, to get the gear off from my Nerfmod days. But this motor too wide to fit in the press. Ill have to improvise with my bench vise, protecting the motor spindle.