The New M6 and its redesigned parts

[Anbaric]

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2 hours ago, a.noctilux said:

Do people think that the next "anniversary" M6 will have the old type zinc top plate ?

How about the "only" two arrows red LED thing ( no center LED ) ?

 

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[Vlad Soare]

On 1/7/2024 at 1:09 PM, a.noctilux said:

Do people think that the next "anniversary" M6 will have the old type zinc top plate ?

I certainly hope not. Please, God, don't let that atrocity come back to life - ever!

 

[a.noctilux]

"Zinc top" ...

That was kind of provocation, of course.

I used many M6 over many decades and never found one with those "atrocity" (bubbles ?), so I don't quite understand the fear of "non-problem"

With 132,454 M6 (from my 8th Pocket Book) produced, I wonder how many with this zinc disease.

[Matlock]

Nearly 172,000 Leica's with Zinc top plates were produced and the number of "bubbling" plates was very small in comparison. 

[Matlock]

2 minutes ago, a.noctilux said:

"Zinc top" ...

That was kind of provocation, of course.

I used many M6 over many decades and never found one with those "atrocity" (bubbles ?), so I don't quite understand the fear of "non-problem"

With 132,454 M6 (from my 8th Pocket Book) produced, I wonder how many with this zinc disease.

They were mostly restricted to members of this forum. I have never seen a case (other than photos) and I know of no one who has (again other than on this forum). Still never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

 

[a.noctilux]

We talked about this, here

this is the nice solution for "non problem" in look

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not mine !

[Vlad Soare]

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Doesn't matter. That's not the point. The number of Leicas with broken plastic gears in the frame counter mechanism may be small, but that's still an atrocity no matter how you look at it.
Half-baked cost-cutting measures are atrocities no matter how many (or few) copies are affected.

Edited January 8, 2024 by Vlad Soare

[a.noctilux]

What I do appreciate in M6 long life is better small "things" (some are even not documented * and some are "backward progress" **) I (or we ?) didn't ask for,

maybe many things I didn't aware of.

* for example the two screws to retain better the eyelets not present on earlier M6

** not IXMOO friendly body & bottom plate, at some point, while older M6 accepted these cassettes

[TomB_tx]

1 hour ago, a.noctilux said:

** not IXMOO friendly body & bottom plate, at some point, while older M6 accepted these cassettes

That would be an issue for me, as I use IXMOO frequently with my M6. However, the target market for the new M6 wouldn't care.

[Fotoklaus]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Vlad Soare:

I certainly hope not. Please, God, don't let that atrocity come back to life - ever!

 

The Zinc Cast was a solution for mass production. These days CNC Milling is the way for those small batches.

[Matlock]

1 hour ago, Fotoklaus said:

The Zinc Cast was a solution for mass production. These days CNC Milling is the way for those small batches.

As Leica reported at the time, it was mainly to solve the problem of distortion of pressed brass top plates, Obviously with CNC milling this would no longer be a problem.

[Anbaric]

2 hours ago, a.noctilux said:

With 132,454 M6 (from my 8th Pocket Book) produced, I wonder how many with this zinc disease.

For some, it's an article of faith that this problem is extremely rare. For others, it's 'inevitable' that the zinc will corrode. I don't think either is true, simply because whenever I look at a reasonable sample of M6s on sale with decent photos online, I see a small  but significant minority with bubbles. Just now, I checked the online shop of a major dealer that has 8 cameras on sale. One of them has obvious bubbles. A year or two ago I looked at 20 across several shops and found 4 were affected.  Given the volume of production and my impression that several percent are affected to some degree, I'd be surprised if there aren't thousands of them out there (most of which we never see, of course). But mostly when I notice this problem at all I just see a few bubbles.  The number with severe disfiguring 'zinc disease' (some cameras can end up looking almost like they have a hammertone finish!) is thankfully much lower.

[lefse]

11 hours ago, Matlock said:

They were mostly restricted to members of this forum. I have never seen a case (other than photos) and I know of no one who has (again other than on this forum). Still never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

 

Neither have I. And I’ve had a few of them.

But that doesn’t mean it’s bullshit. Also, I wasn’t aware until today that this phenomenon occurred on the TTL too. Seems like environmental factors are more important than the manufacturing method. One could speculate that if Leica knew about this, it gave them an extra incentive for switching over to computer controlled milling of brass.

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[Anbaric]

10 minutes ago, lefse said:

Also, I wasn’t aware until today that this phenomenon occurred on the TTL too. Seems like environmental factors are more important than the manufacturing method.

There are runs of production where this seems to be much more frequent and severe (e.g. some early Wetzlar cameras) so there do seem to have been manufacturing issues, usually attributed to impurities in one of the materials used. But I've also seen it in Solms Classics and TTLs (and in both silver and black chrome cameras), so it was never fully solved.

[cj3209]

The bubbling is purely cosmetic.  But it does look pretty ugly.

[Matlock]

8 hours ago, lefse said:

Neither have I. And I’ve had a few of them.

But that doesn’t mean it’s bullshit. Also, I wasn’t aware until today that this phenomenon occurred on the TTL too. Seems like environmental factors are more important than the manufacturing method. One could speculate that if Leica knew about this, it gave them an extra incentive for switching over to computer controlled milling of brass.

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Late M4-P (from 1984), M6 and M6TTL all have zinc top plates.

[Fotoklaus]

vor 17 Stunden schrieb Matlock:

As Leica reported at the time, it was mainly to solve the problem of distortion of pressed brass top plates, Obviously with CNC milling this would no longer be a problem.

You could save a lot of expensive tooling and multi stage forming with the zinc cast. Most of the german camera industry with all there suppliers where gone.

In the 50s and 60s they sold millions of cameras made out of brass and chrome.

 

[TomB_tx]

Die cast is cheaper in high volume production, but the cost of making the die rules it out for low volume products, like today's Leica,

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Anbaric]

And machining the brass is much easier than it used to be because they have CNC machines: https://www.leica.pt/mechanics/?lang=en

Edited January 9, 2024 by Anbaric

[Marckyokay]

On 9/11/2023 at 10:08 PM, Bronco McBeast said:

Mine, one from the first production batch, does not scratch film. And even if it did, I wouldnt have made a Mega Dramatic Opera out of that.

i’m still not sure any M6 has faulty backs. 
 

The new M6 has a Black paint Door, which shall Brass at some point, as opposed to the MP door which is Black chrome.

The inside? Why in the world would it be different than MP/M-A? What defines the MP/M6/M-A is the outside, not the mechanism...

Sorry for the super late reply to an old message, but, 

was the back door of the MP/M6 even brass? Is it on the new M6? How would we know?

Just curious.