Found this neat little Sony on the bay a couple weeks back. After some negotiation with the seller, I got it for a decent, yet fair price. I've never seen one exactly like it before. It was sold as not working, and initial triaging showed that yes it works, but only for a couple minutes at a time, then it would stop keeping time. The radio worked, but the manual radio switch was very loose.
They used a pioneer speaker in here, how neat!
I set to work trying to diagnosis the timekeeping issues. This is a strange configuration of clock I haven't seen so far, but Its nice and compact. The motor output essentially drives the inside of a gear, and the outside of that gear drives another gear which drives the digits. I though initially the motor may not have been installed correctly and wasn't making great contact with the inside of that gear, nope! It was making fine contact.
Scared it was a stripped gear, I pulled the cover off the gearcase. It was surprisingly clean, but I flushed it (not the motor) with 91% isopropyl spray just in case. Some dirt came out, but no major signs of failure. Then I inspected the output from the gearbox, and found that it was out of it's socket on the coil side of the motor, and would therefore move just out of reach of the other gears! No wonder it worked for only a few minutes at a time. Slid the gear against the gearbox case with just enough room to keep it in contact on both side of the gear case, and issues solved!
Also got to try out my new soldering iron while replacing the slightly burnt neon bulb. This thing is AWESOME. If you want a handheld iron, this is a good choice. Also repaired that radio switch, turned out to be a little loose on the PCB, reheating the solder helped to fix it. Apologies for my carpet pics, I'm displaced from the workbench at the moment!
The finished product. Pretty nice little clock, it continues to show what nice flip clocks Sony made back in the day.
They used a pioneer speaker in here, how neat!
I set to work trying to diagnosis the timekeeping issues. This is a strange configuration of clock I haven't seen so far, but Its nice and compact. The motor output essentially drives the inside of a gear, and the outside of that gear drives another gear which drives the digits. I though initially the motor may not have been installed correctly and wasn't making great contact with the inside of that gear, nope! It was making fine contact.
Scared it was a stripped gear, I pulled the cover off the gearcase. It was surprisingly clean, but I flushed it (not the motor) with 91% isopropyl spray just in case. Some dirt came out, but no major signs of failure. Then I inspected the output from the gearbox, and found that it was out of it's socket on the coil side of the motor, and would therefore move just out of reach of the other gears! No wonder it worked for only a few minutes at a time. Slid the gear against the gearbox case with just enough room to keep it in contact on both side of the gear case, and issues solved!
Also got to try out my new soldering iron while replacing the slightly burnt neon bulb. This thing is AWESOME. If you want a handheld iron, this is a good choice. Also repaired that radio switch, turned out to be a little loose on the PCB, reheating the solder helped to fix it. Apologies for my carpet pics, I'm displaced from the workbench at the moment!
The finished product. Pretty nice little clock, it continues to show what nice flip clocks Sony made back in the day.
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