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Lars
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 - 03:21 pm: | 
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If, like me, You like to tinker with old cameras and lenses, You have probably also done the same mistake as I have. You carefully (or so You think) dismantle an SLR lens. You lift the apperture ring, and PING! one small steel ball is lost forever.
What do You do now! Well, You can always order new ball bearings from Micro Tools or the like. But You have to order quite a lot of them in order to reach their minimum order value. Or You can throw away the lens.
No, dispair not. Help is closer than You think. Right inside Your computer in fact. What You need is an old discarded 3.5" diskette drive. At the small end of the worm gear that moves the magnetic heads, there is a tiny ball bearing containing up to 7 small steel balls of just the right size. What You should look for are drives from Citizen, Teac and Sony. Older drives are generally better than new ones. I have used these to fix lenses made by Pentax, Canon, Konica, Topcon and a number of third party lenses.
In the same diskette drive You may also find other useful parts like springs and screws.
So there You are. A free tip for You all. |
John Nunn
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - 10:49 am: |
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Thanks Lars. Also in a hard drive you will find a powerful magnet or two to help stop loosing those little balls. |
charlie
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 21, 2005 - 10:57 am: |
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However if the balls themselves become magnetized they will attract any steel chips that arew around. |
rick
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, September 22, 2005 - 08:51 pm: |
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...and may lead to other health problems..... |
John Nunn
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 23, 2005 - 12:11 pm: |
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Oh! Now I am really concerned, But maybe not, after all how much magnetism can a tiny ball bearing hold to cause a problem? Does the magnetism eventually diminish with time? I wonder.I don't want to lead anyone into dire straits. |
Lars
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 23, 2005 - 02:47 pm: |
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Those of You who wish to discuss health related problems, will probably find other web sites more interesting.
Lets stick to the subject! |
Henry
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 23, 2005 - 02:47 pm: |
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Any tinkerer who has been tinkering very long has a magnetize/de-magnetize thingie. Cheap yet priceless when the need arises at 11PM on Sunday night...prime tinkering time around here!
I have one tweezer that is a delight to use yet it mysteriously gets magnetized. I suspect alien abduction... Anybody have a clue?
Thanks for the heads up on the little-tiny ball source. Got an old 3.5 floppy drive in the attic.
Henry |
WernerJB
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 23, 2005 - 03:29 pm: |
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This first class tip about a source for steel balls should have appeared two days earlier, as it would then have saved me from creeping through my study looking for that damn thing !
On reassembling a Fujica Compact Deluxe (there are two such balls inside the lens barrel of each one of those cameras) it had jumped off my desk maybe because it had been caught by a magnetized pair of scissors !?) and, as other tiny objects of that kind, mysteriously disappeared into nowhere although I use a plastic mat to prevent this. After a painful hour it reappeared under a bookshelf and was then put back to where it belonged.
Thanks again for the splendid tip ! |
WernerJB
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, November 19, 2005 - 05:26 am: |
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Have just detected another source for these balls: inside every nasal spray container with a manually operated pump there is a non-return valve which contains one tiny steel ball and a small but sturdy steel coil spring, both items can serve as or easily be turned into replacement parts. |
Nick
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, November 23, 2005 - 03:10 pm: |
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Sometimes dropping the magnetized part can demagnatize it. Works well on tweezers. |
