A very frustrating follow up with Asahi Pentax K

[kl122002]

I hope this time won't be another debate topic here.

I just fixed an Asahi Pentax K, the old M42 camera which is the first Asahi Pentax with auto-push stop down lever installed . It was serviced by a Japanese in 2022 (his name is inside the base plate) . The original owner said the slow speed was having problem so I found out more : The B shutter can't trigger and the slow speed was working intermittently, some how the mirror also skipped to flip and shutter curtain released. He decide to give up since the camera is old and not want to spend money in repair again.

So I opened it and checked ,the slow speed gear box is jammed. The previous technician just dropped oil on the pivots but not fully cleaned with the middle brass wheel, where inside has 3 tiny rings that designed for push and start the time counting. Then one of its M1.4x 3 screw was broke and gladly I have spare to replace. The mirror looks fine but it has been opened before.

Then I know the upped should be the problem and I am so damm right. Somehow the advance gear was not in right place. In each advance stroke it had approximately 2-3 wheel teeth's turn missing to complete the whole process, which causing the B shutter failed to operate and the shutter sometime just clicked without release . The returning spring (damm it! I hate this part! ) was not completely winded . The gears are also filled with dust and oil dirts . I spend a lot of time in studying, tracing and cleaning and figured the solution.

All I could say is it took very much of my patient and this whole process is very frustrating . I can see the previously technician has marked on the wheels but if I follow his marks everything are just wrong . In the end I have never marked any and I still managed to make it back to right order.

I personally don't like to doing this follow up other technician's stuff. How about you? Do you have any stories like this ?

 

[Dan Daniel]

I've worked with prototyping and modeling designs for a long time. And it is often difficult to pick up someone else's work. This is not because they have done something 'wrong' but that they have done it differently. The steps to get from here to there is making something work is not a hard path sometimes. Operations can be done in different orders and feed what needs to happen next in different ways. And picking up someone else's sequence mid-stream can be really hard. Their techniques and thinking are embedded in what they have done up to then and yet you don't know it.

Then again, especially with cameras that have been fully designed and engineered and manufactured to a working state, there isn't much room for creatively rethinking how to make things work. It's a lot of forensics, determining what is doing what and why and how it affects other operations, etc.

Sometimes people screw up. I've done it and others have had to clean up my mess. I've cleaned up other people's messes. Sometimes there are different ideas on how something should be done and one is right and one is wrong. Sometimes both ideas will do what is needed.

And sometimes damage happens in transit or such. Life is messy.

Yeah, cleaning up other people's mistakes is not fun. Although I somehow doubt that I will live to see a day where this isn't just part of the human condition.