Issues with a 'new' Solari Cifra 3

[flipoclock]

I have one on my bench right now, it's not mine, nor do I have any experience with these clocks, but I told the guy that owns it this and he was still fine to send it to me for repairs.

Issues were:

-Clock was not working at all
-Clock was giving a mechanical / metallical 'plung' around the 53rd / 55th minute

Clock not working was putting in 2 fresh batteries and it fired right up again
The 'plung' has by now been determined to have to do with the switching of the hour at which a mechanical arm makes a movement which triggers the hour flap to flap. I suspect that the plung was originally on the hour which made you not really hear it because the hour flap was also flapping and somehow it 'moved'.

The issue actually got worse I guess because the hour flaps also started flapping intermittently while I was trying to figure out how the movement works for they are very different from most other flip clock movements.

So right now, the clock is actually running, the minutes are flapping away, however the hours are flapping intermittently, some hours do flap and some don't, you have to manually forward the flaps and then it might continue on its own or it might not.

The plung is a small spring which releases tension and sits right next to a small metal plate, which intensifies the sound of the releasing, this is most likely normal that it happens, however, according to the owner, it did not happen before the way it is occurring now.

Anyone ever encounter something similar before or have any thoughts/ideas? I am running ouf of them and would hate to send it back unrepaired, but if that's what it is, that's what it is.

The clock is from 2017 by the way. The owner has sent it back to Solari in the past but that was a complicated and lenghty process and did not resolve the issue.

[Guest]

Man...I have had to fix a bunch of these new battery version Cifra 3 machines. They are actually not very well built, it seems.

I have discovered that they are not well lubricated and tend to start dragging after 2 or 3 years. The "plung" is the spring tensioned arm that activates the hours after the minute rolls over from :59. There is a notched cam on the side of the minutes barrel near the motor side (where the circuit board is for the pulse motor). When it rolls over from :59 it is supposed to drop to move the arm to push the hour tile over. It is by design to make that noise...it is just the way that mechanism is made to work. Kind of clunky! In fact it closely mimics the original design of the 1960s version of the clock, too.

So, the lubrication dragging seems to be in between the toothed wheels, at least in my experience with them so far.

[flipoclock]

Thanks for that, I will see if a tiny bit of lubrication might help.

The issue with the clunk, I think, is that it used to be around the hour mark and it is now around the 53/54/55th minute, making it 'extra' noise. I can make it less anyway by putting something (a tiny piece of paper might suffice) between the spring and the metal plate, stopping it from echoing.

I am too not impressed by the build quality opposed to the price of the new ones. I am thinking about buying one of the older ones, one that needs work of course, just to get a bit of practice on it and who knows, I might be able to fix it

[Guest]

I think that extra clunk before the 53/54/55 minute is the little flat lever "priming" itself into the geared wheel to get ready to push over the hour flap (that is...if I remember correctly). I hope I am remembering...

[flipoclock]

Thanks, I can only go on the owner's story that it was not that way before, perhaps it is supposed to be that way. I will try to make it a bit softer, but don't think I can change it or make it go away.

[Guest]

Good luck, my friend...these things are tricky devils.

[flipoclock]

yeah, thanks. Have decided not to take it fully apart from I fear I might not be able to put it back together again and that would mean it would have gotten worse than it was, but will see how it goes

[gdoubleu]

I have one on my bench right now, it's not mine, nor do I have any experience with these clocks, but I told the guy that owns it this and he was still fine to send it to me for repairs.

Issues were:

-Clock was not working at all
-Clock was giving a mechanical / metallical 'plung' around the 53rd / 55th minute

Clock not working was putting in 2 fresh batteries and it fired right up again
The 'plung' has by now been determined to have to do with the switching of the hour at which a mechanical arm makes a movement which triggers the hour flap to flap. I suspect that the plung was originally on the hour which made you not really hear it because the hour flap was also flapping and somehow it 'moved'.

The issue actually got worse I guess because the hour flaps also started flapping intermittently while I was trying to figure out how the movement works for they are very different from most other flip clock movements.

So right now, the clock is actually running, the minutes are flapping away, however the hours are flapping intermittently, some hours do flap and some don't, you have to manually forward the flaps and then it might continue on its own or it might not.

The plung is a small spring which releases tension and sits right next to a small metal plate, which intensifies the sound of the releasing, this is most likely normal that it happens, however, according to the owner, it did not happen before the way it is occurring now.

Anyone ever encounter something similar before or have any thoughts/ideas? I am running ouf of them and would hate to send it back unrepaired, but if that's what it is, that's what it is.

The clock is from 2017 by the way. The owner has sent it back to Solari in the past but that was a complicated and lenghty process and did not resolve the issue.

I have 3 of the latest battery powered Cifra 3, and all of them and the "plung" at the 53rd/55th minute.