[QuadList] TCR-100

Thu Feb 4 08:51:18 CST 2010

The biggest failure we had in the tractor was in the roll pins that held the bevel gear to the motor shaft.  These would shear off with an interesting effect.  We tried to keep the belt full so that it was not unbalanced.  That way you didn't have gravity yanking on that pin when the weight of the carts was off to one end or the other.  RCA came up with a number of mods addressing that issue, the last one of which was effective.  The other problem we had with the belt was in the very early days of the machine.  The belt knew where it was by a system of lights shining through holes in a metal plate ina bcd pattern.  That was the same technique they used to tell the belt which bin it was in front of and when it was there.  Initially, they used 24V lamps for light sources.  They went through several different ones trying to find some that were immortal, but not so. RCA finally came out with an LED kit that solved most of those problems.  The lamps were used inside on the transport to tell where the threader arms, were etc., It was a tremendous improvement in the reliability of the machine when those LEDs were put in.  The other advance they made over time was eliminating a number of the micro switches that told the logic where various devices were in their cycle. Carriage in/Carriage out, arms, up, arms down, cart in the bin in front of the transport yes/no? has a cart been loaded out of the bin? etc.  These micro switches really got beat up and RCA decided they could do without so much information.  There was third party guy who developed a box many people added to their TCRs to monitor these switches so when one failed, you could save time getting to it.
  When I worked at WGN, they had three TCRs, two for air play and one for make-up.  The make-up machine had an editor and there was a busy session everyday editing promos using that feature. The crew got so proficient at dealing with its eccentricities that they could crank out a huge volume of stuff in one shift.  Their machines also had the EFIS and the random access.  There was a yellow line painted on the floor beyond which you were not to intrude when the machine was loaded because there was a light sensor that told the machine someone had changed a tape on the belt. It would dump the transports and go into, I think it was called, ALS mode, to re-read all the barcodes on the belt to find out what spots were where.
  There were a lot of updates for the machine and the difference between the shop order 2 machine and the shop order 10 was tremendous.

Bob Bruner W9TAJ

Engineer In Charge

Maintenance and Design

WTTW/Chicago

773.509.5468

bbruner at wttwl.com.

Attached Message

From:
Trevor Brown <videovault at sky.com>

To:
'Quad List' <quadlist at quadvideotapegroup.com>

Subject:
Re: [QuadList] QuadList Digest, Vol 20, Issue 35

Date:
Thu, 4 Feb 2010 10:07:09 -0000

Bob you are correct on the 10 second rule, for TCR100 carts

First in the brake as the second deck is already loaded and last because you did not need to load the other deck
We had a mod that arrested the sliders half way so they could get to the cart quicker to help speed it up.
If they failed or the logic did not recognize them the sliders hit them, and broke them into several pieces

The big tractor on the front driven by a mains operated motor which was quite meaty had a solid state relay to turn the power on and off
But very small mechanical relay to switch between reverse and forward, the logic being it only operated  when the solid state relay removed the power
Again the solid state relays used to fail and the small reversing relay used to vaporize.

We also had an editor built into ours so you could thumb wheel in an edit, but the pre role was always from SOM so you could get a three minuet pre role if you were working near the end of tape
Then you would adjust the thumbwheels and revise the edit and wait another three mins, as you can gather this was un useable, anyone else stump up for this addition 

It was an interesting machine and some of it needed a re-design and RCA never went down that route

The only update I can remember on any RCA kit was new transistorize record amps for the TR70 B’s, but there was a rumor the chief engineer never paid for the TR70’s because there were arguments on spec, something like diff phase on interchange. The new amps really did improve diff phase, so perhaps it was an attempt by RCA to fix a problem and get paid.

Happy Days

Trevor
UK Member

From: quadlist-bounces at quadvideotapegroup.com [mailto:quadlist-bounces at quadvideotapegroup.com] On Behalf Of rabruner at aol.com
Sent: 04 February 2010 04:37
To: quadlist at quadvideotapegroup.com
Subject: Re: [QuadList] QuadList Digest, Vol 20, Issue 35

You could play 10 second spots back to back in the TCR as long as they were the only two spots on the break.   The rule of thumb we lived by was you could play two ten seconds events on a break as long as they were first and last, like a :10 promo going into a break and a :10 ID coming out of it or, the only two things on the break. The midbreak in Hee Haw used to be an interesting challenge for the TCR a :30 local avail, a bumper off the reel to reel a :10 local HFC CM, a :30 second spot a :10 ID and back to the show, often into a rollover in the next position on the tape. Always a little bit of nail biting, but the machine would do it.  We would play the show on the TR-60, which was the SPU for the TCR and it would automate back and forth between the R-R and the carts very cleanly.  You had to reject out of the ID to get back to the show on time, because the position only allowed :02 for ID, but we did it every week with no problems.  

    I was told RCA tried a number of tricks to speed up the cycle time, like dumping the tapes unrewound, and speeding up the belt, but none of them proved practical. 

    The TCR had its eccentricities, but it we shouldn't forget some of the pitfalls of the ACR like welding the reel to the inside of the cart, breaking the little plastic hook that pulls the cart into position, and oh, the column lamps failing just before a spot cluster. Also in the machine we had here, the 5 HP blower was not above failing, usually late on Sunday afternoon . . .

Bob Bruner W9TAJ

Engineer In Charge

Maintenance and Design

WTTW/Chicago

773.509.5468

bbruner at wttwl.com.

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