by Ron Rich »
Mon Oct 26, 2015 1:35 am
Hi William,
Actually, SMC-1's were produced with three different types of "limit switches". The first ones were magnetic, and a utter failure, the second type, had two blades, the third had three blades. The last blade was added to the switches because SOME mechanisms tended to "coast" after power was removed. When coasting, IF, it stopped with the detent switch JUST touching, it tended to add to the up/down count. When this happened, and the next customer happened to play something that did not require the MCU count to be re-set, a wrong selection resulted. The third blade was added to insure that motor power stayed on till it reached an end of the rack (at which point the count was re-set). When we designed the Gen 2 MCU, we did away with the "selection space memory". The Gen 2 shuts down motor power and clears memory after two closures of the detent switch, if no other selections have been made. Opening the inner blade ( I insulate it with heat shrink) as the instructions say to do prevents the motor from slamming down to an end of the rack.
-- Ramps--either type works--early ones looked like a "T", later ones like a "little finger". On the real early "T" type, the flange of the T, was pushed in too far to get a good adjustment--one needs to "re-form" it out, so that in effect, it's a little longer. Once done, it's much easier to adjust the limit switches as per spec. Ron Rich