[tech-3d] internal work on Ricoh XR-10M (KR-10M)

[boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Gary:

>I think I'm also about ready to attempt to hard wire two of my XR-10M bodies.
> It seems to take care of all the disadvantages of the system.


I would say if you have good dexterity, and a good memory for
disassembly/reassembly, it is an easy job.

The first camera I did took about an hour, and I had no problems - I was
lucky.  The hour was spent working slowly and being curious about the
innards, etc.  PLUS fixing a soldering gun that was acting up!

Take the top of the body (don't forget screw inside power pack
compartment), and track down the buttons that fall out (best to take the
top off with body upside down).  Locate some sticky tape.

There is a display that needs to be unscrewed and rotated up and out of the
way (unscrewed off the controller circuit board).  This display can be held
back with a little bit of sticky tape.  The LCD screen is then loose in its
little black bracket - you may want to watch that it does not fall out.
Then the controller PC board comes almost the whole way off (it remains
attached to camera via two(? - memory fails already -) thin "real" wires
that are connected at bottom.  With the PC board out of the way, you can do
the necessary soldering on the slightly lower and more forward release
switch.

When I did my second camera, I did the reassembly/soldering/reassembly in
less than 40 minutes, but when I put it together - last step being to
attach the power pack - the camera went bananas on me.  The mirror was
flipping up and down like crazy, and no amount of fiddling with any of the
switches would make is stop.  The display remained blank.  Then I spent
another half hour trying to trouble-shoot, but could not find the problem.
I decided to sleep on it, as it was 2 AM.

The next morning, being of clear mind, I figured out the problem right away.

The trick on the PC board is that it needs to be very accurately aligned
and screwed down on some flexible ribbon circuits/connectors.  All that
stuff comes loose when you unmount the board.  There are two ribbons
connecting on the left edge (toward the pentaprism) above and below, and
one that connects below the board towards the front (that third ribbon goes
to the release switch).  That third ribbon is no problem alignment-wise,
except make sure none of those thin wires below gets between it and the
board, which is what had happened when I reassembled the second camera.

The biggest difficulty is that all of my fingers, which are of course way
too big, get busy aligning and holding down the board with all its ribbons
connecting - and THEN I have to get a screwdriver in there to tighten
everything down again.  But isn't that always the problem with working on
cameras?

Good luck!

Boris


- Science is the part of culture that rubs against the world.
-
-                                     Stanislaw Lem, _His Master's Voice_

Boris Starosta                        boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Stereoscopic Art & 3-D Photography    http://www.starosta.com
usa - 804 979 3930                    http://www.starosta.com/3dshowcase



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