Minolta Autocord lever.

[Chrismat]

I just mailed my recently obtained Autocord (the second one I've owned, I foolishly sold my first) to Karl Bryan for some work. The focusing lever is fine as the focusing itself, but I happened to come upon a website that makes replacements. If you go to Shapeways.com and enter 'Minolta Autocord' you'll see that they sell replacements. 3D printing factories are going to make it possible to make hard to find parts for a lot of things, assuming of course, if there is a market.

 

[Dan Daniel]

Interesting. I wonder how good the printing is. I've seen some real junk from 3d printers and some real quality.

Installation will still be a problem if the set screw holes aren't part of the printing.

 

[Chrismat]

Yes. A few years ago with my first Autocord, I found a seller on Ebay who made actually made one them himself (but not anymore). I bought this last one, and it was so much nicer than the original, very strong. The set screws were perfect. The problem was the lever hugged the camera body closer than the original, those silver (decorative only?) things under the focusing lever blocked the new lever. I sent the camera to Dean Williams in Idaho who used to work on cameras and he was able to machine away the parts that were in the way.

I always wondered why Minolta never upgraded the lever back in the day, they must have been breaking when the camera was in production.

 

[Dan Daniel]

I wonder if the lever was meant as a "fuse" of some sort? Meaning that it was designed to break before more severe damage was done to the camera? That is really the only way I can make any sense of the material, and even then it doesn't make sense to me WHY they wanted a fuse in the design.

 

[JW PHOTO]

The focusing lever issues was a problem that really started cropping up well after the Autocords production had ended. I'll admit the focus lever is not the Hammer of Thor, but worked just fine while the cameras were young. The main problem for the Autocord, as well as 100's of other cameras from that time slot, was the focusing helicals lubricant. Especially when the cameras were not used. The dried lubricant would not allow the helical to do its job and the owner who would try to make it do its job ended up rendering his fantastic Autocord useless. How do I know this? Because it happened to me probably 20 years ago, which was before I became familiar with the common camera term called "DON'T FUKING FORCE IT STUPID".

 

[Chrismat]

That's a good point. The older stiff lubricant would make the lever vulnerable to breaking whereas when it was newer there wouldn't be any resistance.

 

[Chrismat]

I also e-mailed Karl Bryan about the replacement from Shapeways.com, and he responded by saying he couldn't see the set screws on the one displayed on the web page. I just checked the site again, and I couldn't see the screws either.