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Electronics advice pls - R8 Motor Drive weirdness


rick_dykstra

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Please help me diagnose some R8 Motor Drive weirdness I'm experiencing. Basically, everthing works, but I'm getting no drive or rewind.

 

A few months ago I replaced the cells in my R8 Motor Drive battery with eight 2000mAH cells. Here is a link to a thread on this.

 

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/customer-forum/56224-put-new-cells-my-motor-drive.html

 

It shows a full charge and my volt meter indicates 11.18 Volts. The Motor Drive converts this to 6.3V at the terminals that transfer power to the camera body and the R8 is showing a full battery indicator on the back LCD. So that all looks good.

 

From my previous thread I see that the original pack was labelled 9.4V, 1500mAH. That voltage might have been under load.

 

The meter works, the shutter fires but I get no film wind/shutter cocking advance or rewind. It worked after I replaced the cells and continued to after that.

 

I've cleaned all the contacts with CRC Contact Cleaner, which has always fixed any problems before. The lack of winding is replicated with a second R8. Both R8s work properly with a Motor Winder.

 

So it looks like signals from the camera telling the Motor Drive to wind or rewind are not working. My first thought on this would be the gold contacts on the motor drive.

 

I've almost stripped it down to look inside for something obvious, but need to go out and buy a Philips #00 with an 80mm shank for one of the screws.

 

Any thoughts on what might be wrong?

 

Thanks. Rick.

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Rick

 

I agree it sounds like a problem with the motor drive - it doesn't work on both cameras, a motor winder works on both.

 

Not famailiar with them in detail but I assume the motor winder does not use the same battery pack. Next to check would be to try swapping with another motor drive battery pack, if you have one, to see if that works.

 

Otherwise, try testing the battery pack to see if it can actually supply real current - a 21w car light bulb would draw about 1.7A which might well be what the motor would, if it was working. Connect that and measure the voltage. Depending on how good your soldering is, the voltage might drop under load, though interested the motor drive battery is used to supply power for the meter. Are you sure about that? The wires look quite thin too.

 

Look at the thermistor in the battery pack and test it's resistance. Difficult to know, but it should be a few tens of kilohms. If that was wrong, the motor drive might be thinking it's overheating and shut down.

 

I doubt that the contacts on the camera carry the full motor current, so there will be transistors in the motor drive to switch the motor current instead. It's possible one or more of these have failed.

 

Without a schematic, it's difficult to know what's going on, but I hope this has helped.

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I bought a new motordrive for my R8 when Leica released that product and fully charged it. I ended up not using it right away despite assuming I would, put it under a bed in my house, and many months later attempted to recharge it and it would not recharge. It's still dead! A piece of junk, in my opinion, at least based on my horrible experience with it.

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Thanks for your reply Mark.

 

Here's what I've found. The insides of the R8 Motor Drive looks a lot like the insides of your M8 - stuff everywhere, but very neat. Quite a masterpiece really. I've noted some disassembly hints at the bottom.

 

The motor unit is a Faulhaber 1741L 4.5C (17mm x 41mm), with Y1641 479 printed below that. It sits vertically in the grip. I rigged some wires directly from the battery pack and it works, making either the wind or rewind spindles turn depending on polarity. :) The gear mechanism is gorgeous, self selecting forward or backward automatically with a flick of a group of gears, according to the direction the motor spindle first turns.

 

Unfortunately, this good news about the motor came at a cost. When we first tested it, my wife (who was holding the wires to the battery) and I both went "Ahhh!" when we saw smoke, wafting gracefully up from under the middle of the gear housing. Now I don't know if I cooked something that was good or finished of something that was bad, but further investigation was called for!

 

I unsoldered the wires taking power to the motor's terminals (maybe I should've done that before applying power from the battery straight to them) and removed the 'gear box'. Now I could see the flexible circuit card in all it's glory, running throughout the Drive's body between every interface.

 

In the middle are two relays, 8 pins either side, NAIS (but the A is like an upside down V), Thailand, part no DS2Y-S-DC9V and below that,

AGY2327

0.3A125VAC

0.3A110VDC

1A30VDC.

 

Photographers intuition told me that these were the culprits for my Motor Drive not driving, so I dug deeper to reveal their undersides. Ohm-meter readings across the pairs of pins were the same for both. 400(-ish), 0, 0, 0. Hmmm, should those zeros be zeros or ones?

 

Getting this far had taken most of my Saturday (apart from a break to watch the AFL Grand Final and eat pies with the kids) so I didn't unsolder the relays. I'm not as good at soldering as you Mark and I was worried I'd turn my half working Motor Drive into an elegant pile of beautifully engineered components.

 

But I did get it back together and it looks as it should. Doesn't work as it should though - and less than it did before I started the surgery. Before, it powered the camera and tripped the shutter from the Motor Drive buttons, but no drive. Now, it only powers the camera and the camera's own shutter works, but not the Drive's shutter buttons. That'll be the smoke I guess. :( But there's more! After all this, I discovered that the lights on the battery pack were toast, though it's still fully charged. Yikes!

 

I'll be looking into the specs for the relays, to see if they're good or bad. I reckon I have the skills to replace those if necessary. Other options are to send it to Solms, buy a replacement or do without until it's R10 time. Or S2 time. :D

 

I think I'd like to have one that works, for when I want to demonstrate the blazing speed of Leica's 4fps to my grandchildren one day.

 

 

The promised disassembly hints. It's necessary to peel back the leatherette from the bottom of the battery housing to reveal three screws that hold the top half of the housing in place. With this done, and the cover plate with the serial number loosened, you can remove that battery housing top half to get at the lowest screw that holds the metal wrist strap plate in place. That's the only tricky part. A normal 40mm shank Phillips #00 is all you need. Keep the screws nicely arranged if you want a chance of getting it back together.

 

So who's got a working or potentially working R8/9 Motor Drive they don't need? :D

 

Has anyone had the circuit in a Drive replaced? Was the cost OK?

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There must be nargles in our house. The motor winder on my other R8 just died! @#$%&*

 

I sat in my comfy lounge chair for a few minutes and thought, "Bloody hell, has my souped up battery pack (with the 2000mAh cells) buggered up my entire R system!!!" After a few moments I told myself to go back to basics and do what I always do in these situations. Get the hammer.

 

No. Get out my most valuable Leica system accessory - my can of CRC CO Contact Cleaner.

 

Even though this R8 is spick and span, on its first film, just back from Solms for a new shutter and all over check-up, no harm will come from cleaning the contacts. It's worked often enough before.

 

So a cleaning I did go (with a barely wetted cotton tip), on winder contacts and camera bottom contacts.

 

Phew - it winds again! :)

 

Hmmm - why don't I go over the Motor Drive and the other R8 while I'm at it. I haven't done that in the last 12 hours. ;)

 

Woohoo! The shutter buttons on the Drive work again. That's a huge bonus. Sure, it doesn't drive, but having the shutter buttons working makes it useable. I'm happy to wind manually if it means I get those buttons. 'till I get the drivey bits working again.

 

Sheesh! Folks - don't leave home without your can of contact cleaner. I shudder to think how many R8/9s have gone in for service for drive problems when all that was needed was some contact cleaner.

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In the middle are two relays, 8 pins either side, NAIS (but the A is like an upside down V), Thailand, part no DS2Y-S-DC9V and below that,

AGY2327

0.3A125VAC

0.3A110VDC

1A30VDC.

 

Ohm-meter readings across the pairs of pins were the same for both. 400(-ish), 0, 0, 0. Hmmm, should those zeros be zeros or ones?

 

I'll be looking into the specs for the relays, to see if they're good or bad.

 

I've found these relays at

 

http://www.panasonic-electric-works.com/catalogues/downloads/relays/ds_61005_0044_en_ds2y.pdf

 

and the operating resistance of the coil is 405 ohm +/- 10%. Mine came in at 410 and 399. So the coil part of the relays appears to be working.

 

From the schematic for the relays it looks like I've measured the resistance of the wrong pin pairs. Have to open her up again I guess.

 

As a final check of whether the problem is the drive or the battery I rigged up my Nikon F5 battery pack, wired through to the body of the Leica pack. Interestingly the Leica pack puts out two different voltages. Around 10V from one pairing of terminals and about 1.5V from another. Due to a deeper positioning of the higher voltage contact inside the battery cavity, the lower voltage is connected first upon inserting the battery. This must pre-set things, perhaps the relays. If power is supplied once the pack has already been inserted, the rewind spindle starts to spin slowly. Strange - but good news for me - as it's a sign of life!

 

But the Motor Drive did not do any driving once the hacked Nikon battery was connected properly. Back to the drawing board.

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Hi Terry. Contact cleaner comes in other brands, but from what I've just found on the CRC site (Australian), it pays to choose the right one. Check this out:

 

What is the difference between NF Contact Cleaner and CO Contact Cleaner?

Both of these products are Precision Electronic Cleaners. CO Contact Cleaner is a Plastic Safe formula, however it is FLAMMABLE and equipment must be deactivated. NF Contact Cleaner can be aggressive on some plastics, however it is Non Flammable.

 

Here's the link.

CRC Frequently Asked Questions

 

I've found this product which looks like it's available in the US.

 

http://www.polywater.com/fdtechb.pdf

 

Should do the trick. :) Are there any specialist electronics stores nearby? The guys in there will have a product for you.

 

From what I've just seen online there's some contact cleaners that are also described as lubricants. Good for cleaning and conditioning scratchy pots on stereos. I'm not sure if this sort is what we should be using on camera contacts though. The 'lubricant' part has got me wondering.

 

I literally don't leave home on a photography outing without my can of contact cleaner.

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Rick: Thank you so much for your post regarding the R8 motordrive. Why? Because I thought mine was a lemon in that I never got it to work in years past. However, after reading your post yesterday, I inserted the battery into the charger after plugging the charger into an electrical outlet in our front bedroom and after reading the instruction manual again. The manual said the red light should stop blinking after a few seconds, after discharging the battery, and if it doesn't there is something wrong with the battery. Mine did not stop blinking soon, but I chose optimism this time, left the room for a half hour, and upon returning to it noticed the blinking had stopped. Returning to the room an hour and a half later, the green light was on, indicating a full charge. I put the battery into the motordrive, attached the motordrive to my R8, turned my R8 on, selected '4 frames per second on the drive, and pressed and held down the shutter release. Wow--for the first time ever, the shutter fired away rapidly!! Thanks for inadvertently inspiring me to be patient with the battery and attempt to solve the long-term problem I had with it!

 

Terry

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That's great news Terry. And here was me thinking you had been unlucky and got a dud, that I could buy for spares. :-(

 

I had trouble understanding that part of the manual too.

 

I'm determined to get mine working again. See the pics below.

 

First we have the partially dissected motor drive. The two relays I've talked about are the yellow boxes in the middle. Sorry about this pic being a bit blurry - I'm a newby with compact digitals.

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Then we have a close up of what I have believed is the offending relay - the yellow box.

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All eight of it's prongs are soldered on. My multimeter tells me it's not behaving as it should. Getting it off is going to be a trick.

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And this is what it looks like liberated from the body. Wifey and I probed it while triggering it with a 9V battery and sure enough, the normally open contacts at positions 8 and 9 do not close upon activation, as they should. We can hear the click, and the normally closed contacts 6 and 11 do go open upon activation, but that's not good enough. It's dead!

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I tried rigging up a substitute for the relay - hot wiring from common to the normally open contacts, connecting up the battery, running wires over to the motor and pushing the gold contacts onto the bottom of an R8 - and, no dice! @#$%&

 

But at least all the shutter buttons work, as they do when the things in one piece.

 

I'll install a new relay and see if that fixes it. If I can't find one here in Oz I'll be asking for some help from any of you guys with good component stores nearby. It's a DS2Y-S-DC9V, as in one of the posts above.

 

Stand by!

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Rick: This morning, after discharging and then recharging the battery multiple times pursuant to the instruction manual, I loaded a new roll of film in my R8, closed the back door, and discovered that the motordrive would not advance the film and the counter at all. Additionally, neither the horizontal nor the vertical shutter release buttons on the motordrive would activate anything. Thus, I have to assume that the battery, which came with the motordrive many years ago, is stale even though it does charge. Now to find out where I can get another one in the U.S. Wish me luck!

 

Terry

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B&H Photovideo should have a battery for that motor drive. But I'd give some contact cleaner a try too. However, the fact that you got no life at all is not a good sign as to the vitals of that battery.

 

Do you (or does a neighbour) have a multimeter? Set it to measure up to 20 V DC. With the battery sitting as it would in the camera and numbering the contacts from the top down, test between 2 and 4 to see if you get around 9V. You should also get around 0.75 to 1V between 2 and 3.

 

Let us know how you go. If you do buy a replacement, don't throw the old one away! I know someone who could use that. :D

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  • 7 years later...

Hi,

 

I am facing a problem with my motor drive for R8. Because even if the battery cell has been replaced with the mostly fresh eneloop battery by Sanyo the motor dirve is not working and rewinding the film. But the camera works and is receiving the power to work manually.

 

Pease someone could help how to figure it out ?

 

Maybe I can send my battery unit to one that have the motor drive to check if it works... I live in Warsaw (Poland), but I can send to somebody in EU if it's needed.

 

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

Alberto

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Hi Alberto.  The first thing I have to say is, it's been quite a while since I've used my motor drive with my R8. My two battery packs don't even charge any more, but that doesn't matter, I'm sure we can work out what's going on with your battery and drive.

 

Firstly, have you cleaned all of the contacts between the motor drive and the camera? Use some good electronic contact cleaner and a cotton wool bud. Make sure it's all dried off before putting the devices together and testing them.

 

Secondly, use a multimeter to test the voltage output of the battery pack. There's a post a couple of places above that shows what to do.

 

You mentioned Sony Eneloop batteries - are you saying that you've rebuilt the battery pack with Eneloop cells? It will be interesting to see what sort of charge is being stored.

 

I'll stand by for your reply.

 

Rick.

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Hi Rick,

 

Thanks a lot for your reply... I have really appreciated it.

 

YES the batteries have been replaced and I had exactly the same problem of voltage that you had in your battery pack.( different voltage in the contacts).

 

So I've followed your suggestion in one previous conversation and I did some king of bridge between the back and the yellow cable.

 

And WOW !!! the motor drive started to work correctly.

 

Now I need only to understand if the electric component between the black and yellow cable is really needed or not it's like a diode as you said.

 

I don't know if I need to change it or not...because I can cause a future damage to the camera?

 

Thanks a lot for your advice,

 

Alberto

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