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Old 04-03-23, 19:00
David Dunlop David Dunlop is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Winnipeg, MB
Posts: 3,384
Default Project Progress Report 04-03-23

I thought a Progress Report on the 52-Set Project would be useful at this point in time. Work is still progressing, but in an ‘educational’ direction for a while.

I have never been one to start something without a plan, as much research ahead of time as possible, and a supply of the necessary parts needed for the work at hand to see it through to completion. It has always seemed more effective to disassemble something once, do whatever is needed to bring it back to good working order and then reassemble it

The work needed on the Sender has gone as far as I can take it at the moment, until I can sort out sourcing all the proper, available components efficiently, to fix what has been found needs attention in one go around. It would drive me nuts if the Sender was sitting in pieces for weeks on end while I bounced from pillar to post getting things done. I know the majority of passive and low voltage circuits in the Sender are in good working order and it is in the HT1 and HT2 circuits where items still need to be addressed.

In order to keep things going with the project at this point, I need to redirect my attention back to the Supply Unit once more. It still has a number of physical issues that need to be fixed/attended to, along with a couple of electrical mysteries related to the Receiver Vibrator Supply section. The Supply Unit, is a very compact design that even the Canadian Marconi Company admitted to in its documentation for the set. Repacking the dynamotor bearings and inspecting the brushes can be done with a minimum of careful disassembly, but is so much easier if they are both free standing on the work bench. To replace the dead Drop Cord, however, the front panel needs to be removed, and to remove the dynamotors, the case surrounding the Receiver Vibrator Supply must be removable from the Supply Unit Chassis, to gain access to the right side mounting bolts of the two dynamotors. That latter issue was what prompted me to focus on the stuck Receiver Vibrator Supply Case last year and get it to work properly. As you may recall, part of that work required removal of the Blower Motor assembly to access all the RVS Case hardware and I took that opportunity to clean and restore the blower components so that all Supply Unit parts that should still be in factory original Gloss Navy Grey, are now in that condition and done.

At this point in time, the only thing stopping work from proceeding on the Supply Unit is the need for correct luminous green decals to put onto the front panel when all other work on the Supply Unit has been completed, prior to final reassembly. As noted upon initial examination of the Supply Unit when it first arrived, the current decals were a 1960’s era remake item using yellow luminous paint, and too small a font. Why the Government at that time went with the most expensive, hard to find colour of luminous paint, instead of the cheaper, more common green, I do not know, but they did. The workmanship of applying the decals was beyond poor and subsequent damage to a number of them means overall, they have to be replaced.

I have now sorted out the steps required to replicate the correct looking decals for the Supply Unit. Making the water transfer decal sheets is now the challenge. Fortunately, the Operators Manual for the 52-Set contains a full front photo of the original decals for both the Supply Unit and the Coil, Aerial Tuning front panel. The challenge is that both are less than one half the required ‘full size’ image needed to work with for replicating, and this is where it gets tricky. Old printed photographs are composed of a mass of small, grey scale dots, which produce the black and white image you see on the paper. If you are not careful when trying to enlarge/blow up these printed photographs, you end up enlarging the dots to the point they become visible and the image breaks down. If you make a digital photograph of the original print image and try enlarging it, you risk the digital image breaking down into its component pixels and once again, the image breaks down.

I am not sure when it came into being, but there is now an area of digital image media known as Vector Graphics. With it, you can convert a digital photograph into a vector graphics format, which completely eliminates any breakdown of the image when it is enlarged. You can take a photograph of a postage stamp and turn it into a 20 x 40 meter wall mural, if you wish.

So last year, when we finally upgraded our 16 year old iMac to a new one, I also bought a vector graphics program and installed it, with this part of the 52-Set Project in mind. It is now time to learn everything I can about vector graphics and working with it. Not sure how long it will take, but I am actually looking forward to learning something new for the project. It will mean, in all likelihood, a reduction in things to post about on this thread for a while. In any event, we shall see what happens.

David
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