Não sei se interessa aos outros amigos daqui do Fórum do Jefferson, mas na minha opinião, essas máquinas são milagres da engenharia. Retirei o texto e os links do Post feito por Don Norwood do grupo OLD VTR's do Yahoo Groups, do qual faço parte.
Créditos do texto e das fotos para Don Norwood do grupo [OLDVTR's]
Text and pictures by Don Norwood
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I had an interesting "field trip" this week and thought I'd share some info
and pics with everyone. UAV Corporation recently closed down. They were a
huge duplicator and distributor of video tapes, CD's and DVD's to retailers
around the world, mostly discount or specialty stores. An auction was held
this week to dispose of the assets.
When I say huge, I mean HUGE! The facility was 600,000 square feet! It was a
totally vertically integrated facility. They did everything----from
duplicating the media to distributing it. This included both high-speed and
real time duplication of VHS, and the production of CD's and DVD's, from
making the glass masters all the way to a finished product, packed in their
own manufactured plastic case, printed with their own equipment, etc. A
complete turn-key operation. The only thing I am aware of that they did not
make in-house were the empty VHS shells.
While real-time duplication of tapes is no special thing, they had lots of
machines to do that. I didn't count how many, but certainly many 100's. What
I was interested in seeing was the high-speed video duplicating equipment.
For those not familiar with the process, I'll try to give a basic
description below along with links to pics of the equipment. I've compressed
the pic files from their native 2 meg size down to about 500K apiece, so
hopefully the download time isn't too bad and the quality is still good
enough for you to see plenty of detail.
The high-speed process starts with the production of a Mirror Master Tape.
They started with either conventional 1" type C or Betacam originals, and these were transferred to a half-inch Mirror Master using a special recorder that produces a mirror image of the final VHS tape. This is an Otari recorder used to produce the Mirror Master.
This particular machine was in a maintenance shop and you can see loose parts and screws but it was easiest to photograph. Interestingly, these machines have
head assemblies that change very much like a quad VTR. The whole panel
simply lifts out and a new one drops in. They're sent back for refurbing in
cases that are reminiscent of the quad heads too! Sony also makes Mirror
Master machines that perform the same function as this Otari.
Once the Mirror Master is produced, it's loaded onto a duplicator. They had
both Otari and Sony duplicators. Both take the reel of tape and load it into
a bin. The Otari's are vertical machines and bins, the Sony's are horizontal
units.
Here's a view of some of the Otari duplicators
You can see the air supply lines coming down from the overhead area to supply all of the pneumatics in the monsters. These machines appear to have been built in '89. Next, a front view of one of the T-700-II's shows more detail:
The master ends up in the bin in the bottom of the machine. It is spliced into a loop which runs continuously during the duplication process. A large hub of blank tape is loaded on the top section of the machine, and onto it is recorded numerous copies of the original. This is accomplished by the Mirror Master tape and the dub tape being brought into contact with each other and a bias field applied which
cause the magnetic pattern of the Master to be copied onto the dub tape
without damaging the original Master which simply continues to circulate
through the bin. Of course, all of this is done at a high lineal speed.
Here are some of the Sony Duplicators:
This horizontal flatbed design loads the tape into a bin on the right side of the machine, the section with the handle to open the see-thru top. The blank pancake loads on the left side of the machine:
This is a more detailed shot of the transfer area of the duplicator:
Once the pancakes are recorded, they go to the loaders, in this case Otari
T-320 Video Winders:
These machines are fed empty cassette shells via a conveyor system which keeps their hoppers filled. Tape from the pancake is then spliced to the cassette leader, loaded into the cassette, spliced to the end leader, and then the cassette is ejected into the bottom bin. The cycle repeats until all the copies from the pancake are
loaded.
http://dwn.home.twave.net/vtrs/OtariLoad2v.jpgThis is a front view of one of the machines with the feed conveyor removed.
The rear view of the machine shows the tremendous amount of pneumatics that are used to operate this machine. Much more typical of industrial control systems than tape decks!
And finally the name plate for one of these loaders.
Hope you enjoyed the tour. I did not go for the actual auction, so I don't
know what any of this stuff brought. Considering the demand for VHS dupes,
it might have gone for scrap. I suspect the CD and DVD equipment was more in
demand. Apparently a lot of the production line plastics equipment used to
make cases as well as the packaging systems could be adapted to other
applications, so they were probably worth something too. It's a good thing
the "museum" here is full, those Sony machines were really neat......
Don
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Obrigado Don pelo passeio
Thak you Don for the tour.
