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Jon Goodman
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 15, 2004 - 12:31 pm: | 
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Is it really a special secret, or was I just trying to get your attention? A little of both...lately I've gotten several questions asking if there is a secret to taking a camera apart so that putting it back together will be less of a challenge. The answer is yes, there is a neat way to make sure you never get a part out of order. This is actually a watchmaker's trick.
When you disassemble a camera (watch, radio, anything with complex design and small parts), place on your work area a strip of 1" masking tape, sticky side up. As you remove each screw or piece, place it on the tape. You can sequence left to right, right to left, up to down, down to up...whatever makes sense to you. You can also have two pieces of tape for a camera...left half/right half. You can also place your tape on a piece of paper or in a shallow box (shoebox lid, etc) and make notes to yourself...ie, "this piece went on with the tab facing down," "this pin fit into the third slot on the piece to the right," etc. If you are doing work that must wait until another evening to be completed, this is a terrific system to adopt. I have used it for years, and it is pretty close to fail proof. I hope it helps.
Good luck.
Jon |
Don
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 15, 2004 - 06:12 pm: |
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An egg carton works good too.
Don |
Will
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 15, 2004 - 10:17 pm: |
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Great tip! - thanks Jon.
Will |
rick oleson
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 16, 2004 - 06:20 am: |
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another useful thing in this day of digital cameras is to take a close up photo of each assembly before taking it apart. this helps get all the little spring ends back in the right places, which sometimes would require a pretty time-consuming string of notes to describe. with digital photos they're available immediately and you can just delete the files after the camera is reassembled and working unless you prefer to save them for reference.... and the close focus ability of some of them is impressive (the nikon coolpix 3100 focuses to 1.6 inches... it's pretty much replaced my OM2S and macro lens for repair documentation)
rick  = |
paul ron
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 16, 2004 - 08:33 am: |
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I have been using a personal weekly pill dispenser box. It put the screws in each day as i go from leyer to layer of dissassembly. It keep the screws organized by operation as i go. |
Tony Duell
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 23, 2004 - 01:38 pm: |
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I use one of those Raaco boxes with about 18 compartments each about 3cm square. That's large enough to take things like shutter speed knobs, winding levers, viewfinder/rangefinder windows, etc. I group parts together (i.e. all the parts of the shutter speed/film speed dial on an SLR), and it saves having to remember just which screws went where.
I keep notes on an old palmtop (HP95LX), things like 'Remove 2 E-circlips, washer under each one, and the mirror cocking link. One more washer under each end of it'
Using stick tape would worry me in that it's possible the glue would find its way back into the mechanism and gum things up. |
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