Fisher Lincoln turntable

battradio

Electron trainer
I have been helping a local gentleman work on a Heathkit W5-M and he works for Lincoln lubricants and found out he has two of the Lincoln turntables that he rescued from the scrap pile at work .

Below is an excerpt from the e-mail i got this morning .


((Thank you for meeting with me last night, and taking the time to bring the
alternate transformer. I really appreciate it!


This is one of my Lincoln record changers:


This has links to both models:

http://www.myvintagetv.com/updates2/lincoln/lincoln_changer.htm

The model 70, that I have was a patent model that came out of storage. I
retrieved it from the scrap pile, saving it from the land fill. I am not
sure that it ever worked. It is supposedly an improved model, that was
sold to Fisher. There were more problems with these models though, and the
story I have is that they were all replaced.

BTW: the guy that hired me, was the lead engineer on both of these.
Surprisingly, he had a working model 70 in his living room, when I was
there ))

Thought this might be of some interest here .

PS the transfomer fixed his amp
 
That is super cool, thanks for sharing. From the link you provided it would appear that the model 70 addressed the most dire of the issues with the mechanism, do you have plans on attempting restoration? I'm thinking finding something to replace the rubber bits to be the biggest challenge...
 
He wants to restore them , but the factory threw out all the replacement seal's gaskets and diaphragms long ago .
 
Mark, if they are flat, I can make just about any gasket or seal with a dimensional. Diaphragms are a little harder.
 
So nice to see that these ghosts exist. Would be tremendous if they can be made "every day" functional.
 
Very cool. Even if the seals were laying around they'd probably be useless by now, probably not even useful for dimensions. The drawings for them would be the real value, then you could duplicate them.
 
I am the guy with the Lincoln record changers, that battradio was talking to. Unfortunately, the biggest issue with the Lincolns are vacuum leaks. Usually the molded rubber seals get hard and don't seal anymore. I am no expert, but I was friends with the technician that did all the factory repairs, and this was his assessment. Unfortunately, again, almost everyone that had anything to do with the design or repair of these has passed on long ago. In fact most of the people I work with don't even know that we built them.

The seals are custom designed molded rubber lip type seals, such as the seal on the cross arm and turn table, which pick up and hold the records using vacuum. They are vulcanised onto the metal components, making the fabrication of a replacement quite difficult. Believe me, I have been scratching my head over this for years. As to the small cylinders used for the operation of the change over mechanics, I have never opened one up to see what kind of seals were used.

The next big hurdle is the vacuum control valve and vacuum pump. The valves were quite different for each model, but I think the pumps were common between the two. I have never opened up either of these, but I think they are probably clearance fit in both the valves and the pump. (I could be wrong, too.) If they are, and not too worn or corroded, may be made operable again with some clean up and application of a suitable oil.
 
N9whh;

If the rubber lip seals are still there or if even parts of them are still there it might be possible to find a current production O-ring that could be adapted and glued to the metal parts instead of having to be vulcanized. Modern adhesives may produce adequate bond to the metal to be serviceable. There are both round and flat cross-section O-rings available and there are lots of sizes being produced for various applications. McMaster-Carr has lots of electrical and mechanical parts available.

I remember seeing these when they were new, although I never got to see one in operation. Capehart was another company that produced changers that could play both sides of a record, but those were mostly before the era of LP 33 1/3rpm records. I think they did have a few that would handle LPs but by then the company was in financial troubles and slowly went out of business.

Joe
 
What he said. It would be extra awesome if the original drawings for those seals existed, it would make determining a workable sub a whole lot easier.

I saw somewhere that a guy had modified a Capehart 78 changer to run as an LP changer. I don't remember where, possibly it was on youtube though.
 
If a part of the seals are still in good shape (cross sectioned) and the shaft diameter is mic'ed, the spec's could be extrapolated out for the seals, make a prototype for fit and function, make adjustments and produce a limited amount with a base wide and thick enough to take the strain of use, but thin enough to be able to be glued or laminated to the metal base part.
 
There must be drawings filed w their patent application. I wonder if the 3d printer folks might be able to do smth.
I'm going to be tackling one of these next month and will post updates
 
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