[pure-silver] Update On Replacing Omega D-II Rollers

Someone here kindly sent me an article from March 2005 Photo
Techniques on using roller bearings to update an Omega D-II. I have
now done this and am happy to report that it works quite well. Several
observations for those of you contemplating this:


1) I replaced most of the hardware that holds the adjustment points
   (rollers, neg carrier stage, roller wheel eccentric shaft, etc.).
   The original hardware mostly used phillips head bolts.  In place
   of these, I used allen hex socket heads bolts.  This makes it
   much more convenient to adjust things BUT, it is easy to over-
   tighten (you can deliver a lot more tightening torque
   with an allen wrench than a screwdriver).   I had to take it easy
   with the bolts holding the roller eccentric shafts.  If I got
   them too tight it seemed to pinch the enlarger laterally and
   it would not move up- and down smoothly.

2) Putting the tubing over the passive rollers as the article
   suggests is tough unless you heat the brass roller first.
   I used a commercial heat gun, but a normal hair dryer should
   work as well.

3) It's fairly important to really clean up the running
   surfaces and shafts before reassembling things.  The old
   lubricants get dry and cruddy.  I used no lubricant on
   the shaft/bearing interface.  I did wipe on (not spray!)
   some silicone lubricant strut faces where the rollers ride
   and on the shafts that drive the bellows up- and down.

4) When you do this, your enlarger is going to go completely
   out of alignment.  So ... when you're done, you're going
   to need to realign things.  I use a Versalab laser alignment
   tool for this purpose, but a bubble level (a good one) will
   probably get you close.

5) Harry Taylor at Classic Enlargers (CCed herein) also sells
   a set of machined replacement nylon rollers if you prefer to
   do things that way.  I believe he also sells alignment tools
   and provides alignment instruction.  Harry is also a font
   of all things Omega and sells a good many parts for these
   enlargers.   For more information, see:

      http://www.classic-enlargers.com/


Total cost for this project was about $40 USD including the
replacement nuts, bolts, washers.  Total time was around 4 hours,
including alignment.

My 50+ year old enlarger is now good for another 50 years ;)

If anyone has specific questions or wants a pic of a particular
assembly thats been upgraded, please let me know.
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk     tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PGP Key:         http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/

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