[GreenKeys] Super Cleaning

Craig Sawyers c.sawyers at tech-enterprise.com
Wed Aug 18 02:25:48 EDT 2004


> no confidence at all that they
> would be able to do anything for me on a bearing from the 1930's. I was
> living in a fairly small town at the time and the parts store mostly
> sold auto parts.
>
> I took the thing up to the counter, the guy took a look at it for no
> more than 15 seconds and asked if I needed the same brand or not.

Reminds me of restoring the Lorenz SZ42 (SZ = Schlussel Zusatz for cipher
attachment, and 42 was the year of introduction) cipher machine at Bletchley
Park (UK) a couple of years ago.  The mains transformer was burned out.
First good thing is that the manufacturer had a little engraved plate on the
terminal strip with the voltages on it.  But of course, the laminations were
rusted and bowed - and completely unusable.  What to do?

Well, it turns out that the laminations are still made!  Back in wartime
Germany, they had chosen a lamination size that later became standardised in
the ISO range of transformer laminations.  So I got a stack of them sent
free of charge from a fairly local company that stamps laminations!  Ex
stock.

And the shaft bearings, like you found, are perfectly standard units - by
'em anywhere.

Oh - and the selectors were Teletype, and the screw threads were all
American ANF threads.

Craig



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