We have many old super and standard 8mm silent home movies we shot going back to around 1970 before switching to sound around 1979.
We've always put these up on the Eumig projectors but as i have two still to be made fully workable,(when i can get around to finishing them off) so, i was reading with interest about the Sanyko Dualux 2000H silent duel gauge machine.
In the spare of the moment i searched for one on ebay to see what these old machines go for. As always with ebay i was having a laugh at those selling one and starting prices at £149.99, £159.99,£59.99, £189.99 and prices in between. I just cant comprehend what these people are thinking, however, as luck would have it, i found one for 9.99, the seller was a well known charity so without thinking i bid on it. I wasn't bothered one way or the other if i won it or not but i was the only bidder which did surprise me at that starting price.
It arrived safely and when i opened it my thoughts were that this machine has had little or no use. It was spotless inside and out. What struck me was how well built it is, quite a heavy little lump. The other thing i was happy with is how simple it is to change from super 8 to STD 8, a flick of one single switch. The bulb is a standard 12v 100W A231 so the image is bright enough for the use we need to view a few old home movies, the lens is 1:4 15-25mm. Today i cleared out the sticky worm gear grease and renewed and oiled where i could get to. A quick clean of the bulb pins and everything worked perfectly well.
A simple and very well put together duel 8 projector, for a tenner, i can give the sound machines a rest to view the old silent's.

Good find tom, looks unused, and for a tenner its a no brainer, well made those sankyo's , good work horse's, and overlooked a bit in the small gauge world ......

Looks very nice Tom, ideal for your silent films, at that price it's a great find too, Mark

Thanks Paul and Mark,
I certainly cant argue for a tenner. It's been a fair number of years since viewing the old home movies so now i will get them all sorted and viewed. I was a bit surprised how much is packed into the running of a silent machine. The ones we had years ago were very basic.

Tom,

Thanks for the pics, as I am sure Eivind will want to add them to the "Projectors" section on Super8Database....

No problem Greg, and Eivind is welcome to use the images.

Nice pickup Tom well worth a tenner 👍👍

Nice find! And thanks for letting me use the pictures. They have been added now, and it looks good :-)

That's certainly a winner Tom!

Wenn Sie hier auf Links zu eBay klicken und einen Kauf tätigen, kann dies dazu führen, dass diese Website eine Provision erhält.

Cheers Rik, for a tenner it certainly is. We had a nostalgia trip viewing our half a dozen remaining 50ft, b/w silent films. It was odd viewing them as we both said, "weird to think how great we thought these films were back in day in the early to mid 70s when we bought them for £1.11 each from our local shop". As well as these few that we kept simply for old times sake we also have a fair number of our own silent home movies, the main point of the viewing was to just try this machine out and it does very well.
For the films we will use it for it's as good as any of the Eumig duel gauges we use, all be it not quite so quite running, but when you need to change from super 8 to STD 8, it's the flick of a single switch without having to worry about putting the dot at the top and change gates and sprockets.
The two sound 810Ds/822 sonomatic and 807 we have will now each be used for a specific gauge only so we will no longer need to change gauges on any of them thanks to this little £10 Sankyo. It is a very good little silent projector with a good light output and runs fine, it isn't quite a quite as the Eumigs but it is by no means noisy, it's restriction is that it only takes a 400ft spool, but again, we have no silent films on anything larger than a 200 so its perfect for our use.
I see there is another one on ebay for sale for a tenner, it does have one bid on it but if anyone's interested it's right here, .

Werbung: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266031267456

I stand corrected, this one is the 1000 not the 2000, still a good little machine though.

I've had one of these models for a year or so. I hesitated to buy one since I knew it was sprocketless. One person who usually advertises it for sale on the big auction site (he seems to love this machine and has an endless supply) claims that sprocketless is safer for film. I disagree.

I made the mistake of running films through it I had just bought without running them first on rewinds. My luck -- several of these films already had torn sprocket holes -- so the single claw/pin Sankyo jammed and burned the frame. I should have known better, but sometimes I'm just too lazy to pre-inspect prints, and I've had pretty good luck in the past with buying films off the auction site. The worst that usually happens is that the film would lose the loop.

No big deal, since the film needed repair anyway, but the burned frame is not next to the frame(s) with the torn sprocket holes. These were fairly inexpensive silent films. (Mostly Blackhawk.)

Anyway, my question:

I did go through the projector to lube it, etc, and removed the glass behind the gate for better light output. (It burned frames even with it there.) One other thing that caused issues -- unsteady/jittery picture. I read all the various advice through googling, and I adusted the take-up reel tension, as well as the rear "loop spring" (or whatever it is called) right before the take-up. (I rotated and re-glued the rubber ring.) I have Super 8 films running near rock-steady from beginning to end of a full 400 foot reel. For Standard/Regular 8, I still have some unsteadiness. I believe it is the horizontal claw alignment causing this.

Is there any easy way to adjust this, without a major tear-down risking the whole intermittent assy? I've done this on a Eumig 800 series machine by an adjustment on the removable gate.

Oh, and btw, I have many other working Standard 8mm machines, lol.

Thanks in advance.

Just a gentle bump to see if anyone has an answer.

BTW, I wish I got mine for a tenner. I paid more like 10 tenners a little over a year ago.

Thomas,
Why not buy a repair manual.
https://www.camera-manual.com/sankyo-dua...anual-11009-gbp

For a silent machine it is quite a hefty lump, when i took the back cover off I was surprised at how much was inside it.
The repair manual seems a good option.
Being a duel gauge machine, anything to do with the claw & gate area is something I myself would never attempt to play with, as I mentioned in another thread regarding my Elmo. Simply because there is too much that could go wrong, any mis adjustments would cause it to be noisy, jumpy or both, and at worse, damage a lot of films.
On a similar note, I have got an old knackard NT1 Eiki projector that I've dismantled for the benefit of learning, one of the parts was the cam tank assembly incorporating the claw mechanism. It dead easy to pull apart following the service manual, even putting it back together was relatively easy, but getting those adjustments correct is another story, I would only use an old reel of faded film I no longer care about as a test.

On a personal note, once projectors become impossible to get repaired properly and it's difficult to find good second hand ones, this will be the time I consider leaving the hobby.
As Dave Guest once said, you can have all the films you want, hundreds, even thousands, but if you dont have a good projector to run them on, then they are all useless.

Fortunately, I think we are a long way off that happening.

Quote: Maurice Leakey wrote in post #13

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Thomas,
Why not buy a repair manual.
https://www.camera-manual.com/sankyo-dua...anual-11009-gbp

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Quote: Tom Photiou wrote in post #14

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On a personal note, once projectors become impossible to get repaired properly and it's difficult to find good second hand ones, this will be the time I consider leaving the hobby.

As Dave Guest once said, you can have all the films you want, hundreds, even thousands, but if you dont have a good projector to run them on, then they are all useless.

Fortunately, I think we are a long way off that happening.

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Well, the Elmos have spoiled me. I took another look at the Sankyo, and the gate is all but hidden the way the machine is designed. I'm used to being able to swing out the lens to see and clean the gate on my Elmos. Also, there is no inching knob.

I also remembered that an adjustment to the claw is usually made to either increase or decrease its sprocket hole penetration. I remember checking the penetration as best I could without disasembing anything about a year ago. It looked fine. Also, if this was a problem, it would manifest itself for Super 8 as well, but it does not.

Next, I considered a slight misalignment of the claw to sprocket holes for Standard 8mm. Since they are in a different position on the horizontal plane, this could manifest itself for Standard 8mm but not for Super 8.

I observed what happens when you use the gauge changing switch. Looking at the projector head on from the front of the lens barrel, the left side pressure tab moves, but not the right side. This is another clue as to a potential cause: less pressure from the side tabs for Standard 8mm; the Standard 8mm path in the gate is wider. So while the pressure for Super 8 might be sufficient (the path in the gate is narrower), that pressure might not be enough for Standard 8mm.

In summary, it could be a misaligment of the claw, or insufficient pressure from the gate's side tabs.

Now, films are still watchable. The vertical movement is not constant. The image moves a little bit up for a second, then down again. I actually haven't screened a print with it in awhile, so that's also on my to-do list. The behavior is similar to that of which I once had on my Eumig dual-8 machine, which was corrected by replacing the removable gate. (Luckily I had a spare.) I've experimented in the past with adjusting the removable gate from a Eumig, and did notice that moving the side tabs to exert more pressure made an improvement. It became a balancing act, however, of making sure you had enough pressure, the sprocket holes were aligned with the claw, and the film was centered properly in-frame. Lots of trial and error. I think I got the film to run rock-steady at one point, but one of the sides of the image was cut-off too much, while the other side showed edges of sprocket holes, and sometimes vice-versa after more ajustments. A 1mm change shows up big when projected on screen.


All things considered, this was a bad design by Sankyo. The frequent movement of the gate's side tabs most likely gets things out of alignment over the years. I know others like Bell&Howell used this solution for Dual 8 as well. Eumig really got it right with their 800 series Dual 8s. Too bad the rubber discs were the achilles heel for them. :(

Well, I finally had the energy to troubleshoot this projector a bit more.

I ran a full 400 foot Super 8 reel as a baseline. Very steady image, but needed to increase the take-up tension toward the end of the reel since it stopped spinning.

I then ran a full 400 foot Standard 8 reel. Right away, there was up and down movement. Again, not constant (e.g. not anywhere near 24 movements per second). Moving the framer to both extreme positions didn't reduce the movement at all. Mid-way through, ran it in reverse for a few seconds -- rock-steady image. Hmmm...

That convinced me that it probably had nothing to do with the claw position. I really didn't want to muck around with that anyway, nor disassemble the lens assembly to access the gate to potentially adjust the side guides. Murphy's Law: I would wind up messing things up to the point that neither gauge would run well.

So I went back to the basics: the lower loop former, and the take-up reel tension. Now the latter I had just adjusted optimally for Super 8, but I did need to understand how the adjustments affect image stability in real-time. With a film running, the back cover off, and the front cover off, I observed how much movement the lower loop former made as I adjusted the take-up reel tension. I started by adjusting the tension so that the reel did not spin at all. Surprisingly, this actually made the image stability worse. I observed that increasing the tension improved it until it reached a point of too much tension, and both the lower loop former and the on-screen image were moving. So there was definitely a "sweet spot", and not necessarily the least amount of tension needed to assure that the take-up reel did not stop toward the end of the reel.

Well, I wound up running the full reel about 3 times, constantly adjusting. I would get the image fairly steady for a while, but as the film progressed, I needed to adjust accordingly. Very much trial-and-error, obviously. At one point, I added some white lithium grease to the take-up tension screw and the plastic part of the gear it contacts. Finally, I removed the plastic lower loop former, cleaned it with alcohol, and sprayed some Elmer's dry lubricant on it. A combination of all those things seemed to help. Most of the reel had a very watchable, fairly steady image. I ran a reel of a different film, and again adjusted tension as it ran. I seemed to get a steadier image with this particular film.

Well, I got tired of this excercise, so I haven't run a Super 8 film again, yet. But I do think I have it adjusted pretty well for Standard 8, though not 100% perfect. I'm not sure that 100% is possible.

Another consideration: The Super 8 image on film is 50% greater than Standard 8. The image instability is therefore magnified more when projected than for Super 8, so it is more noticeable. I project an image about 4 feet wide for both guages.

Also, these are old Blackhawk b&w films that I purchased new almost 50 years ago! To the best of my memory, I have never cleaned nor lubricated them. The fact they they run as good as they do, and almost perfect in some of my other projectors, is a minor miracle in and of itself. Had I not been out of Film Renew, I would have lubricated them before the experiment. (BTW, I used to use Film Renew a lot when I had my first Elmo ST-1200HD, since that was very finicky with prints. My latest Elmo ST-1200HD is much better, so I don't find the need to lubricate with Film Renew much at all.)

Anyway, I think it's the nature of the beast, really. The beast being sprocketless projectors, compounded by being dual-8 as well. For many years I had problems with Standard 8 on my Eumig dual 8 as I mentioned above, although that had different sprockets for each. The only other sprocketless projector I ever had was a Eumig in the 900 series, and I sold that long ago since I could never get a decent steady image with it on most films.

There is not much benefit to dual 8 projectors anymore, since most hobbyists have multiple projectors anyway. The one thing I do like in Dual-8 projectors is having a bright halogen lamp. I don't have any "Standard 8 only" projectors that originally came with a halogen lamp. I do have an old Bell and Howell that I converted to halogen. I believe, but I could be wrong, that the last of the Eumig P8s were possibly the only "Standard 8 only" projectors with a halogen lamp, and if not, perhaps the only one with 100 watt light output.

BTW, there is a seller on eBay (U.S.) that I mentioned above who regularly gets 350 clams (USD) for this machine. He makes it sound like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. He calls it "professional, commercial-grade" and claims that projectors with sprockets will damage film. He says it is "top of the line" and calls the 1.4 lens "ultra-sharp" and "one of the sharpest lens ever placed in a projector"! He claims he fully services them, because he replaces the belt, installs a new lamp, cleans the "chassis", and cleans the film path and gate. (All that should take about 15 minutes.) He claims they are all "hardly used" and you won't find such a pristine projector anywhere on the internet. No mention of internal lubrication, which is the most time consuming and perhaps the most important part.

He also sells those late-model cheap-looking Bell and Howell Luminas (not the 50s and 60s ones that are built like tanks), and Chinons, and calls them "top of the line", too. Sheesh! But he gets top dollar for them!

I think he targets the people who don't know anything about projectors and need one to attempt to convert to digital. Gotta give him credit though, since he gets 350 clams. So if I decide to sell mine, I know what to do. :)

The adventure continues...

Well, my first theory was the correct one. It does have to do with the claw position, despite what I said above. Putting the framer adjustment to one of the extreme positions, which is at the higher end of the gate, actually stabilizes the projected image, as does running it in reverse. I think I might have tried that before I made more adjustments to the take-up tension and/or the lower loop-former. Hard to remember now.

The fact that Super 8 ran so smoothly still gnawed at me. I reduced the size of the Standard 8mm image on the screen as much as possible, and the movement was still noticeable. Nothing was really consistent -- parts of a film were rock-steady, others were not.

So I had a closer look at the machine -- I didn't have to remove the lens assembly, thankfully. I did remove the lamp house and some metal plates behind the gate facing the lamp. Finally got to where I could see what sets the "stops" for the left side of the gate when switching gauges. The fact that the screws had green paint on them indicated that it was a good bet that this is what needed to be adjusted.

Well, they were stubborn screws -- they wouldn't budge. I put some oil on them to try to loosen them up. They were very small, so I was using those really small screwdrivers, which don't let you get much torque. I even used a wrench on the screwdriver to get more torque. Nothing...

So even though these were Philips head screws, I then tried a flat-head, partly because the heads of the screws were getting stripped. Wouldn't budge, until I used a wrench again -- then Bingo, they loosened.

So I manually threaded a Standard 8mm film in, and since there is no inching knob, I removed the back cover to turn the fan, which in turn moves the claw. I slightly adjusted the "stops" so the claw pin was centered in the film's sprocket hole. The pull-down looked fine, and when the pin entered and exited the holes, it did not touch the sides of the hole.

Now the trick would be to adjust it for Super 8, too, and find the sweet spot that would work for both gauges. This is a fundamental weakness of these dual-8 machines. I doubt that this was ever adjusted correctly at the factory for this particular machine. We are talking fractions of a mm tolerances here. This machine was in great shape when I got it (it still is), and the tightness of the screws, and what looked like intact green paint on them, leads me to believe that this was not a machine that was used much, nor monkeyed around with.

There are only one set of "stops" that can be adjusted -- one near the top of the gate, and one near the bottom. When you move the gauge-changing switch, the 2 "stops" both move. Adjusting the "stops" changes their position relative to the overall left side of the gate. It's confusing to try to describe, but simple to see in action. The bottom line is that you can't adjust the "stops" independently for each gauge, so you have to adjust them so they are in the correct position for each gauge after the whole left side moves. This is different than the Eumig 800 series dual-8s, where there is a separate gate for each gauge, which automatically positions the film so that the claw pin is in the right position. The B&H dual-8s that I have seen actually move the claw itself.

One of my favorite axioms in engineering design is that something should do basically one thing, and do it very well. Dual-8 machines try to do 2 things -- run Super 8 and Standard 8mm.

Another problem I have with dual-8 machines is the size of the claw's pin. It has to be small enough to fit Super 8. I believe a larger claw for Standard 8mm is better, given the larger sprocket holes. One of my theories for years was that was the reason why my Eumig 800 series did not run Standard 8mm well. But as I mentioned earlier, it turned out to be a bad gate. I still feel that a larger pin for Standard 8mm could certainly not hurt, and the dedicated Standard 8mm machines do have a larger claw pin.

Anyway, I decided to test with Standard 8 first, to see if my theory was finally correct. I figured I could re-adjust later for Super 8. So I put everything back together. I threaded up a film, and around the time it got to the gate, it stopped threading! What? You'll never guess what happened...the belt broke, lol. Just my luck. Well, I ordered a new one and will have to wait.

Now, I have received machines with broken belts, or belts that have turned to goo. On machines that I've had awhile, the worst that has happened was that the belt became too loose and the machine ran sluggishly. So I was surprised that this belt had just broke. Oh well.

At least I'm getting to know this machine better, and since Super 8 was running so smoothly (before my gate adjustments, of course), I'm optimistic that I can get this machine running in tip-top shape. So maybe it will live up to its reputation that I had heard about before I pruchased it. My priority for this machine is Standard 8mm, so I won't sweat it too much if I can't get both gauges to run properly.

It's kind of weird that although Standard 8mm has the larger sprocket holes, that it was this particular guage that was not running smoothly. You would think that it would have been Super 8 with the issues with its smaller sprocket holes. In other words, Super 8 requires tighter tolerances of the claw pin position than that of Standard 8mm in order to run correctly.

Well, after a 2 month break, I finally got back to adjusting the gate on my Sankyo Dualux 2000H. I received the new belt about a week after the last post above, but didn't feel like tackling the issue until this week. Installing the belt was a no-brainer, of course.

I spent about 6 hours over the course of 3 separate nights working on the gate adjustment. It is not easy. Much trial and error, using ad-hoc methods. I have Standard 8mm running very smoothly, but Super 8 has the up-and-down movement now. My 1st goal was to get Standard 8mm running well, so mission accomplished. I might just leave it at that since I have many more working Super 8 projectors that run well.

I think that the people who say that the "jitters" for this machine having to do with the take-up tension are wrong -- loosening screws for the tension or bending metal (depending on the particular model of the Dualux) is balderdash. Also, the rear "shock-absorber" may be the culprit, by I don't suggest cutting up sponges and putting them in your Dualux projector.

The issue with getting the gate adjustment right is that there is only one adjustment that you can make, and it has to be correct for both Standard 8mm and Super 8. There are not 2 separate adjustments. And when you switch from Super 8 to Standard 8mm, one of the gate edges moves, which alters where the claw will be positioned to enter the sprocket hole. But keep in mind, the claw position does not move when making the switch. So you adjust it correctly for Standard 8mm, do a quick test with everything still disassembled, but with no lamp. Then re-assemble the whole projector, and screen part of a film. Then, and only then, can you truly see if your adjustment works. If it doesn't -- disassemble and try again. That's just for one gauge. To do the other gauge, you risk upsetting the adjustment that you already have working.

The tolerances are very, very tight to get it to work for both gauages. It is obvious that the adjustment is part of the design, since I've identified which screws to adjust. I'm guessing that when Sankyo made these, they designed a special piece of film with a hole just big enough for the claw to penetrate, and if you got the adjustment right for one gauge, it would automatically work for the other.

I'm also guessing that my particular machine was never adjusted correctly. They probably biased it toward Super 8, and the original owner probably only used it for Super 8. Sankyo's QA for this model probably sucked. I doubt that it could get out of alignment over time, but anything is possible, I guess.

So that, my friends, is just of of the issues with Dual 8 machines. Hindsight is 20/20, but I believe that making Dual 8 machines was a stupid idea -- this coming from someone who owns several, though. Why do I own them? Simply because nearly all the available Standard 8mm-only machines have out of production lamps.

In an alternate universe, if I was desiging a projector, I would add an adjustment to effectively move the position of the claw on the horizonatl axis, probably by moving the gate edges, as needed to be done with the Dualux. I assume an adjustment to actually move the claw horizontally would be way too complicated, especially taking into consideration that most (but not all) machines move it up and down for framing. (My 16mm machines just move the mask part of the gate.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if you find that you need to lube your films often to get them to run steady, it is most likely claw alignment issues with your machine, not the film. Lube is a band-aid that masks the real issue.

Case-in-point -- the Standard 8mm film I have been using to test my adjustements with the Sankyo is nearly 50 years old, bought new by me (actually by my parents as a gift to me), and NEVER lubed. The gate adjustment made it run smoothly.

I don't remember if I made any more adjustments after that last post, but I've decided to leave my Sankyo Dualux 2000h as a Standard/Regular 8mm only machine. A few weeks ago, I ran a Super 8 print through it, and though watchable, there were times that there was some up and down jitter. Standard 8 runs fine. As steady as you can expect from any Standard 8mm print, and these are with sometimes 50+ year old prints that haven't been lubed in ages.

I'm ready to say that it is IMPOSSIBLE to adjust the claw position to get both gauges to run smoothly. If it is possible, I'm not the guy who can do it!

As I probably mentioned, I have plenty of machines for Super 8 -- but I'm always on the lookout for projectors that can run Standard 8mm well, and that have a decent lens and at least a 100 watt halogen lamp.

I must run mine up again soon, we have a fair few home movies of us as youngsters but these will only be viewed on the Eumig 810, they are much kinder to film.
The Sanyko silent I bought does actually run fine and is a solid little machine so this will be for those old silent films we bought many moons ago when we feel like a bit of nostalgia.
With so many sound films now viewing 50ft or 200ft silent b/w extracts is no longer something that interests me in the least.

Quote: Tom Photiou wrote in post #23

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I must run mine up again soon, we have a fair few home movies of us as youngsters but these will only be viewed on the Eumig 810, they are much kinder to film.
The Sanyko silent I bought does actually run fine and is a solid little machine so this will be for those old silent films we bought many moons ago when we feel like a bit of nostalgia.
With so many sound films now viewing 50ft or 200ft silent b/w extracts is no longer something that interests me in the least.

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It does i deed, and for an old silent machine it does have a good light output.
I do like the single switch change over from super 8 to regular 8. I think i was very lucky with mine as i dont think its had much use, the engine bay is extremly clean.