Philips 1400AF projection television progress

[high_vacuum_house]

I have just given it another try with the brightness and contrast turned down to minimum. The picture looks better on the camera now though the picture is much more bright and crisp than the picture shows.

Whilst I had the aurora connected, I played a DVD through it. The picture quality does look good. The sound from the speaker is pretty good as it has a decent size to it being a console cabinet.

I will have to get the line timebase centred and have another go.

Christopher Capener

p.s spot the ant. I have no idea where that came walking in from!!

[peter_scott]

I think your line timebase is running at half speed.

Peter

[Heatercathodeshort]

Agree. It confused me a bit due to it's clean perfect shape! Probably a resistor gone high, maybe R69 270K. J.

[high_vacuum_house]

I agree I think the series resistors to both the line and frame hold pots require checking. They are both right on the adjustment limits of their controls. I managed to get the line to lock (just!) at the correct frequency.
The volume pot didn't respond to some switch cleaner so will have to remove the front control assembly again.

Christopher Capener

p.s
I did the Christmas turkey today as I was at my parents for Christmas day. I burnt a couple of small sausages which fell down the back of the tray. They reminded me of something. Can you tell which one it is

[peter_scott]

Yes, an over cooked sausage and an over cooked Philips black capacitor are difficult to tell apart.

Peter

[Lloyd 1985]

If you pull one of those tar capacitors apart, you'll find sausage meat inside it

Regards,
Lloyd.

PS, good work on the telly so far!

[Jan Zodiac]

About the old Philips potentiometers. If they are the same type as used in the chassis of the attached photo, then I understand your trouble with them. I restored some early Philips sets myself (TDK1410 - TDK1420 - TDK1720 and TDK1722) and I really had a lot of trouble with those pots. I remember I even had to open a few of them to get them properly cleaned. That was pretty difficult. Especially the ones for vertical and horizontal hold was bad. You can live with a noisy volume pot, but the same problem on the hold controls, makes it almost impossible to adjust correctly.

Jan

[Heatercathodeshort]

Originally Posted by high_vacuum_house

I burnt a couple of small sausages which fell down the back of the tray. They reminded me of something. Can you tell which one it is

I think the first one is the capacitor with it's leads cut off.

To be fair to Philips those black tar capacitors had a very long service life. They outlived all the conventional wax types and many were still good after 25 years or so. Nothing lasts for ever. That picture looks really good, just needs a bit more height and width. Warm the EHT cup before removal. If it very tight it can snap the glass cup. A smear of silicon grease will aid future removal. John.

[high_vacuum_house]

A bit more progress tonight.
The resistors in series with the line hold and frame hold pots were checked and had gone rather high in value. Replacing these brought the controls back to near their mid point and eliminated picture jitter.

There are still a few black capacitors to change. There is one in the width control circuit which was replaced and the width is more controllable now.

I found the issue with the uncontrollable sound was caused by a poor connection on one of the 13 way paxolin plug/sockets that connect the front controls with the chassis assembly. After giving these a clean and making sure they were well pushed home, the sound is now very good with no crackles.

With the Aurora connected to a DVD player, the picture quality is good and stable.

Christopher Capeer

[high_vacuum_house]

I refitted the CRT assembly back into the optical assembly and refitted the final mirror and tidied things up a bit. I adjusted the final mirror to get the picture more central onto the Fresnel lens. I adjusted the mechanical focus but it needs a bit more fiddling to get the focus better.

After refitting everything, I played a film through the aurora to see how it performed. I have no idea how bright the picture would be when new but it was bright enough to watch comfortably once most of the lights were switched off.

Just needs the mechanical focusing to be improved and the Fresnel lens cleaned and I think that it is not far off complete.

Christopher Capener

[peter_scott]

Well done! That certainly looks as bright as I remember the 1400A.

Peter

[Heatercathodeshort]

Don't remove the outer circular corrector plate on the optical unit. It is very difficult to refit and will make correct overall focusing very difficult.
Manual focus can be a bit of a fiddle at first but it should be perfectly focused over the entire area of the screen

What a cracking picture! A very brave attempt Chris. Well done. John.

[murphyv310]

Hi.
If you mark the corrector lens in relation to its fitted position there is no problem removing it. I had the corrector lens off the Decca 1000 many moons ago and didn't mark it and it easily set up rotating it but TBH the change was pretty marginal. I did a rare Peto Scott projection set last year and the corrector lens had gone white inside from corrosion so a Philips 1400 lens was substituted and it worked perfectly with excellent focus.

That's a brilliant picture on your set. I really like the pictures on a good projection set, well done.

[Heatercathodeshort]

The corrector lens was quite critical in the DECCA 131 I restored for the museum. The original Philips projection service kit included a jig to set it correctly.
Your Decca 1000 came from an hotel in Littlehampton. I didn't touch it but it was very original. I have another one that actually came from Decca Radar at New Malden when they closed the service dept decades ago! John.

[Electronpusher0]

Originally Posted by Heatercathodeshort

Your Decca 1000 came from an hotel in Littlehampton.

Not the beach hotel by any chance, I worked there part time when I was a student, once served Margaret Rutherford tea. It was Littlehampton's most prestigeous hotel and just the sort of place to have a projection TV.

Its now long gone, replaced by flats which sit on the old footprint which is crescent shaped.

Peter

[Heatercathodeshort]

Exactly! The hotel with the strange log timberwork almost on the beach. Long gone...John.

[lightning]

That's a lovely old TV, well done on the restoration. Should see it right for the next fifty years

[high_vacuum_house]

More progress today,
The screen had white dots and marks on it and had distorted a bit over time. This probably didn't help the final optical focus.
Final mirror removed and screen removed from cabinet. It is a thin Fresnel lens sheet held in tension by 4 small springs, one on each corner. All assembled on a rectangular frame which screws into the cabinet.
With the screen removed from the frame, it was washed in the sink with ordinary soap and water. This cleaned all of the white marks off and it looked a little less yellowed.
To flatten it out I warmed it up with hot water and flattened it with some heavy chopping boards and a big bag of flour and left it nearly an hour. It is still a little warped but now considerably flatter.
Dried and reassembled.
Whilst the screen was out I cleaned the screen surround, speaker surround and knobs. The top of the cabinet was also polished. The cloth went nearly black! With the screen refitted the cabinet looks much better now.
With test card C I was able to get the mechanical (optical) focus much better now. The picture looks a lot clearer now.
Think I am not too far on completing the restoration

Christopher Capener

[McMurdo]

A great write-up and result, there can't be too many of these projection sets left. I wonder what the designers would've thought of our modern 60-inch lcd screens.

[peterpixel]

A very interesting read indeed. Way back in the mists of time I came across Philips and Ferranti projection sets and being based in Manchester we could obtain new screen material from Ferranti in Oldham. It was Gem Mill I think. The service manual called for Egyptian cotton wool used with, I think, industrial alcohol as the cleaning materials. The alcohol was obtained from the local chemist after undergoing the inquisition by the pharmacist but the Egyption cotton wool drew a blank. I have a vague memory of the subject of seeds contained with the cotton being less of a problem with the Egyption variety being mentioned. All a very long time ago. Well done Christopher. Peter.