Konica Hexar RF (Copal Shutter) Curtain Travel Times

Hi all! I know this is a bit of a ridiculous request, but does anybody know the intended curtain travel times of a Konica Hexar RF or could measure them for me with their shutter tester?

I have successfully reassembled the shutter a previous owner botched and got it working great again. I have a shutter tester and am now stuck on shutter curtain tension... I have no clue what travel times I should set the curtains to!
Maybe someone that has more experience in this regard could offer me a guesstimate? I've done a lot of camera repair in the last couple of years but have just started working on focal plane shutters, so I don't have any feel for it, if that even exists.

Thank you so much in advance! Here are some photos of the shutter in question (taken before the repair, please disregard the curtains that haven't completed their cycle):






Here's a quick update on the rest of the camera for those interested:

The electronics seem to be working fine, but one of the advance gears has stripped. I measured it out and was able to source new brass gears from China. They have the correct gear module, but need a lot of modifications to fit. The hole needs to be drilled much larger and the gear must be slimmed down a bunch, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem with my small lathe. I bought a lot of gears so I have enough tries

Just a rough guess but the travel time should be somewhere around the sync speed since that is the max length of time the whole image is exposed for all at one time, so logically that would at least the travel time of the blades. 1/125

I'd love to get the repair manual if you have it.

Patrick Robert James said:

Just a rough guess but the travel time should be somewhere around the sync speed since that is the max length of time the whole image is exposed for all at one time, so logically that would at least the travel time of the blades. 1/125

I'd love to get the repair manual if you have it.

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Thanks! I guess that makes sense, so I'll go for around 8ms unless someone else chimes in.

As soon as I have the camera reassembled and get the shutter to actuate electromagically (at the moment I'm just using my fingers to manually release the opening and closing curtain), I should be able to tell if the speeds are off, right?

The speeds at/below flash sync should be decent regardless of curtain tension (as long as I'm in the correct ballpark) But the speeds above may be inaccurate (faster/slower) if my guesstimate is off by a lot. That's my thinking at least. Shutter capping should not occur as long as both curtain travel times are identical. Just thinking out loud here to confirm.

I do not have the repair manual unfortunately. I'm just learning by doing, but the Hexar is thankfully really simple on the inside. Truly a joy to work on!

I have never opened an electronic shutter like that so I really have no idea. Not many people bother with those things, but maybe someone that does digital cameras will chime in. Maybe try Fred Miranda too. I think I saw a guy over there that does a lot of work on older digital cameras. Those should have a similar shutter.

I have to align the vertical on the rangefinder on my Hexar RF after about 15 years of abuse. They are nice cameras. Leica should have made it instead of Konica, although if it had a Leica badge on it these days it would probably sell for ten grand. Lol.

Viel glück!

It does not say in the service manual??


Probably around 6 ms. Here is a list of similar cameras, but yours is not in the list.

Patrick Robert James said:

Viel glück!

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Danke!

ic-racer said:

It does not say in the service manual??


Probably around 6 ms. Here is a list of similar cameras, but yours is not in the list.

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Again, I don't have the service manual as it isn't publicly available, or at least I wasn't able to find it. I was originally going to try 6ms, so I guess I'll do that?

Thanks for the link! I built that exact tester so the list was the first thing I checked

It should be similar to a Copal. I have an old chart that shows 5.5-6ms for Copal so the posts above should be OK.

John Koehrer said:

It should be similar to a Copal. I have an old chart that shows 5.5-6ms for Copal so the posts above should be OK.

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I have already assembled the camera far enough to test and can confirm that the shutter speeds above 1/125 are all a bit slow at 6ms. I'll do some more testing soon and will update the post with correct times as soon as I have the camera up and running.

It was already a huge win to see the shutter operating! Before, it always showed error 20 on the display, but now it's firing perfectly!

As soon as I have those curtain times figured out, I'm off to machine a new advance gear

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and help so far.

neotil1 said:

Danke!

Again, I don't have the service manual as it isn't publicly available, or at least I wasn't able to find it. I was originally going to try 6ms, so I guess I'll do that?

Thanks for the link! I built that exact tester so the list was the first thing I checked

Click to expand...

Really! I'm starting mine now, would you care to contribute your experience to that thread! Thanks in advance.

neotil1 said:

I have already assembled the camera far enough to test and can confirm that the shutter speeds above 1/125 are all a bit slow at 6ms. I'll do some more testing soon and will update the post with correct times as soon as I have the camera up and running.

It was already a huge win to see the shutter operating! Before, it always showed error 20 on the display, but now it's firing perfectly!

As soon as I have those curtain times figured out, I'm off to machine a new advance gear

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions and help so far.

Click to expand...

Greetings, neotil1,

I'm glad to see that you fixed your Hexar RF shutter problem.I bought a Hexar RF from a Japanese auction website a year ago, but it came with the same problem as yours (Error 20). The shutter is not fully functional and I have been seeking for repair for so long, but cannot find any.

As I don't have the skills needed to repair, I wonder if you can consider fixing mine. I am more than happy to pay for the repair. I don't have permission to use the private message system on this forum, so please reply me through my Instagram @_shadow_one_ or other means at your convenience.

I'm looking forward to your reply and have a good day.