Making the smallest Nipkow NBTV, THE NIPKOW NIPPER.

[Viewmaster]

I have just put the film mask onto the Nipkow image film as you can see.
The position between the two is obviously very critical and they have to be joined together to enable the screw adjustment to work in order to get correct 'spiraling in' of the scanning images.

After much soul searching I hit on the idea of punching four 1/4" diameter holes in the mask. After correct positioning I stuck 4 small pieces of very thin parcel tape across each hole. This sticks the mask firmly to the Nipkow film underneath.

You can just make out the four holes showing brown through the parcel tape.

The light halo around is a low energy spotlight underneath. I was going to use a standard lamp but thought the rising heat might distort the films.

Previous to all this I ran a test with the Nipkow film minus the mask without any sync and was pleased to see a picture albeit low contrast due to light leakage.
The mask will push up the contrast and hopefully give me an acceptable picture.

I am writing all this up on my web site soon and will to give you the link where you will be able to view the picture achieved.....good or bad !

[gary]

Best of luck Albert. Fingers crossed the picture is not only good but great!

[Harry Dalek]

Yes good luck from me to its very hard to make things small i have been watching with interest ...

[Viewmaster]

Thanks, Gary and Harry, for your kind wishes.

Yes Harry, as you say, it's very hard to make things small.
On this theme I have just noticed that due to the camera lens being very close to the film in order to fill the monitor screen, I seem to have quite bad barrel/parallax type distortion.
So now I probably need a longer focus lens in order to get the camera further out from the film plane.
It seems that trying to bring up a NBTV Nipper is just as difficult as bringing up a human Nipper.

[Harry Dalek]

Thanks, Gary and Harry, for your kind wishes.

Yes Harry, as you say, it's very hard to make things small.
On this theme I have just noticed that due to the camera lens being very close to the film in order to fill the monitor screen, I seem to have quite bad barrel/parallax type distortion.
So now I probably need a longer focus lens in order to get the camera further out from the film plane.
It seems that trying to bring up a NBTV Nipper is just as difficult as bringing up a human Nipper.

Well thats very very small i should say ! I see your having problems with the camera if i were doing it and was thinking of this problem i think i would try a toy Microscope
Then the camera via its lens ...but i think i would try to do it a passive way via larger lenes and see it i could do it that way ...but it will be interesting to see how you do it .

i loved the recording device i think you were working on some time back ,i was always thinking of doing a recording device via the sun ! magnifying glass perhaps a speaker vibrating the glassing burning the modulated signal on paper around a rotating drum and on cloudy days i would use a candle heating a needle [/code]

[Viewmaster]

Thanks, Gary and Harry, for your kind wishes.

Yes Harry, as you say, it's very hard to make things small.
On this theme I have just noticed that due to the camera lens being very close to the film in order to fill the monitor screen, I seem to have quite bad barrel/parallax type distortion.
So now I probably need a longer focus lens in order to get the camera further out from the film plane.
It seems that trying to bring up a NBTV Nipper is just as difficult as bringing up a human Nipper.

Well thats very very small i should say ! I see your having problems with the camera if i were doing it and was thinking of this problem i think i would try a toy Microscope
Then the camera via its lens ...but i think i would try to do it a passive way via larger lenes and see it i could do it that way ...but it will be interesting to see how you do it .]

Well Harry, whatever I finish up with it mustn't be too big so that the Nipper gets overwhelmed with too many bolt on pieces.

[
i loved the recording device i think you were working on some time back ,i was always thinking of doing a recording device via the sun ! magnifying glass perhaps a speaker vibrating the glassing burning the modulated signal on paper around a rotating drum and on cloudy days i would use a candle heating a needle [/code]

Oh, Harry, Harry, I think you are quite as mad as I am!
I do like your candle idea.
Sitting in a dark room with a flickering candle watching flickering NBTV.
I like it !! I wax(!) lyrical at the idea.

And yes, the Edikow recording machine has not gone to the tip after all these years. The control speed has been solved and once the Nipper
is off to play I shall be back on my other crazy idea.

[gary]

i was always thinking of doing a recording device via the sun ! magnifying glass perhaps a speaker vibrating the glassing burning the modulated signal on paper around a rotating drum and on cloudy days i would use a candle heating a needle [/code]

Harry, always thinking of something new! Can you just finish what you are doing?

[Harry Dalek]

i was always thinking of doing a recording device via the sun ! magnifying glass perhaps a speaker vibrating the glassing burning the modulated signal on paper around a rotating drum and on cloudy days i would use a candle heating a needle [/code]

Harry, always thinking of something new! Can you just finish what you are doing?

Oh probably not Gary one thing leads to another....nag nag nag

But i will try

[Harry Dalek]

Hi Albert no worries i can understand that about to much being bolted on ,its an interesting idea and looks good think we all like crazy gadgets i respect that you have given it a go ....always nice for something to work 100 percent but you can just try and do your best and others and see and copy perhaps if they have the hankering .

Mad yes who wants to be a boring normal spending all day on facebook worrying about what other family been up to,rather spend my mind space trying so old experiment long Obsolete patent .


The recording thing is interesting i think one of the first posts on off topic got me thinking about recording as it was to do with the first recordings in the 1800's they could record but had no way to play back till now how cool is that a leap of faith that worked and sad they would never know or hear the recordings ...i think they used paper but not sure how it was marked onit perhaps it was heat , ink not sure but any case very very cool.

Now they never finished what they started and look what happened .

[Viewmaster]

I daresay some here are all agog to see what the Nipper's first stumbling steps look like so here is the first 2 second shot I took recently, taken sideways on.

It's on wmv and seems to load slowly. It's on utube too here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Car5tPL ... ture=email

Anyway, this was the first attempt to get Nipper onto his feet and the film disc is not running quite true yet, hence the cramping at the bottom and streching at the top.

It's a bit out of focus as well as you see and there is a very bad hot spot in centre. (more diffusion required on the Luxeons, me thinks).

The sync is floating a wee bit up and down. so have to look into that too and the mask is not up to scratch yet.........
Excuses, excuses, excuses.

But the Nipper idea does seem to work and with the improvements which I am now working on should produce quite a useful Nipper image.

[Viewmaster]

Here's a 15 sec shot where the sync kept slipping. The sync is obtained straight from that tiny image of the sync holes in the film. As the film isn't running true on this early attempt the sync hole images wander and so did not lock on permanently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh_M9Yyx ... re=related

[gary]

Getting there Albert!

[Viewmaster]

Have added a small 3 " dia flywheel now to increase the mechanical inertia in the
4046 loop. Some jigging with the component values may also be required as well as is usual with a different design of the mechanics compared with the standard NBTV Nipkow disk.

Have also realised that the poor definition, which I thought was the video camera out of focus, is due to the image on the film still being off focus and some flaring too on the image. (It was an old camera I used to take the photos and getting the focus spot on was near impossible)

SO, I am taking a very dark image and under a microscope I am going to
cut the emulsion from the scanning hole images ( they have to be .004 inches dia !!)
Using a needle as a cutter I found that the emulsion layer tears and it's not possible to cut a good round hole.

Amazingly, just by luck, I find that if one cuts from the reverse side with the emulsion face down on a hard surface roundness can be obtained.

A tiny shim steel template is going to be used to align the cut with the faint scanning hole images on the film first, then offering the cutter onto the template. This template also governs the depth of cut and hence the scan hole diameters.
This seems to work well on tryouts.

This will eventually give me greater contrast too as the scan holes will be completely clear tiny holes and no mask should be required.

All this is now more akin to watch making than NBTV, but is an interesting challenge to improve greatly the NBTV picture I have so far.

I've used up some of the wife's darning needles for trials so have to buy her some more !
The number of darning needles used up in NBTV is amazing, isn't it?

[Viewmaster]

An update on drilling teeny weeny holes !

Here is a rough drawing showing how I am going to drill .004 "dia holes in the final film.
........Using a microscope of course !

First, the shim steel is aligned up with the film's faint scanning hole image, then the hole drilled down to the plate glass surface.

The drawing is pretty self expanatory........the thicker the pad, the greater the final hole diameter in the film. The thinner the pad then the smaller the hole.

Now waiting for some .004" dia stainless steel wire to arrive to be used as a 'clean out tool.' ........

The drilling 'swarf' tends to block the tiny drilled hole so it has to be cleaned out. 42SWG copper wire works OK but tends to bend too easily.
Stainless will do the trick I think.

Watch this space for the next chapter of,

"The Nipper in another b******* hole!"

[AncientBrit]

Just a thought Albert, but could you use a heated wire to melt a hole in the film rather than trying to drill it out?

Heat applied around the middle of the (stainless steel?) wire conducts through to the tip.

You would also need some form of X-Y manipulator to position the 'cutter'.

I suppose you would be left with a small collar of displaced material which would need removing.

Regards,

Graham