Oil for shutter?

[BetterSense]

I have a synchro-compur that works perfectly straight out of a naptha bath. All speeds work and are accurate. However once the naptha evaporates overnight, it becomes sticky again. This leads me to think that it might work if I oiled it. What kind of oil is best to use for a shutter, that is resistant to gumming up? I wonder if ATF would be good.

[brucemuir]

I 've heard of using fine grade graphite mixed with the ronsinol/naphtha.
If you aren't getting into the shutter and hitting the pivot points etc I would avoid oil.

[RPippin]

There is a product called "DrySlide" that you can pick up at a good bike shop. It is a molybdinum dysulfide (sp?) mixed in an alcohol base. When the alcohol evaporates the drislide is a slick, not oily, coating that is left on the parts, and is super smooth. I think the drislide is slicker than graphite and stays on longer. I've used this for years on everything from cables in bikes to old shutters with great success. If you don't like the results you can always wash it out with lighter fluid or alcohol.

[edp]

Take everything to bits and clean it properly. Dunking a shutter in a bath of solvent does nothing (except maybe break it if it's one with rubberised paper aperture blades). If it gums up again when the solvent dries, that is because the dirt has simply moved around while it's wet and then settled in a new spot.

Take it apart (don't take the aperture blades apart, they're a nightmare to put back together, but everything else is simple as long as you don't let any springs or screws escape), clean everything, reassemble it, and put a tiny spot of very light oil on the spindles in the gear train, and nowhere else.

[ic-racer]

Its probably not clean yet. Nothing should be on the blades or pivots.
For example here is a section of the Compur Lube Schedule:

[richard ide]

Find a watchmaker and ask for a few drops of watch oil. The oil is very thin. Apply with a sharpened toothpick.

[Leigh B]

I 've heard of using fine grade graphite...

Graphite is the worst stuff in the world. Hasn't been used for camera repair in the last 30+ years.

The standard lubricant for slow-moving applications is molybdenum disulphide, aka "moly-D". It's available as a powder or in a suspension grease.

www.micro-tools.com

The naptha bath has probably removed all of the lubricant from the escapement. Replacing it requires complete disassembly of the shutter, because many of the lubrication points aren't accessible with the escapement mounted.

- Leigh

[John Koehrer]

1) NO OIL!
2) NO GRAPHITE!
3) NO MOLY!

Your shutter gets slow again because some old lube is still in there. Dunk, work the shutter, repeat. Blow it out if you have a compressor or even an air bulb of some sort. I may take a couple of repetitions

FWIW, the Naptha will leave a very light residue and provide enough lube for your escapement.

[Leigh B]

Your shutter gets slow again because some old lube is still in there.
FWIW, the Naptha will leave a very light residue and provide enough lube for your escapement.

Agreed. The only solution is to disassemble the shutter and run the escapement through an ultrasonic cleaner. That gets rid of the garbage and prepares it for new lubricant.

Naptha IS NOT a lubricant, and will not serve that purpose in a shutter.

The correct application of the proper lubricants is the only permanent solution to this problem.
It needs to be done by someone with the knowledge and tools to do the job right.

As I said before, moly is the standard lubricant for slow or rubbing applications in the camera repair industry. These would be the locations marked "Lube A" in the diagram that ic-racer posted.

Perhaps you know something that professional camera repair folks don't know.

- Leigh

[domaz]

BetterSense- are you dunking the whole shutter or just the timing gearset? You can take the timing gearset out of the Synchro-Compur pretty easily. Take out the gearset put it in a Film container with naptha filled halfway up. Shake lightly and leave it in there for a while. Then take it out and let the naptha evaporate. Now look the gearset- it should have adjustable notches for the spring tension. You can decrease the spring tension in the gearset with those notches. Also- when you actually re-install the gearset in the shutter it mounts on an adjustable post- you can move the gearset closer to the shutter to make it work faster as well. So there you go- two ways of adjustment and no oil needed.