I finished with the Sync Separator and audio sections. All sections are done except the IF strip and tuner. I still have to go through the back chassis control pots to clean them up and check them.

Here is a picture of the completed Sync section.
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psy41vmb32.jpg

And the audio section:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...pskyyp27xp.jpg

I did the IF strip today. The chassis is basically been re-capped etc.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psczxaqfzc.jpg

I installed some Y2 safety caps and one of them went to the switched AC power from the on-off switch to the transformer. Remember when I redid the volume pot? The one wire was chaffed pretty good on the chassis and I cut out that section and installed about a 4 inch piece of new wire under the chassis. That wire was the one that needed the safety cap. I installed a terminal strip and spliced a wire into the switched AC power and ran it to the terminal strip. I then installed the safety cap.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psf5akwlrl.jpg

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psebi27078.jpg


I'm in the middle of cleaning, lubing, and checking the back panel pots. When those are done, then the speaker and mount gets cleaned up and re-installed.

BTW, I have a APB for a electrical dual coil Ion Trap in the classifieds. Mine came with a resistor across the leads and a Dual PM Ion Trap.

Yours for the cost of postage.


http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...5&d=1488589222

Check your PM. Thanks.

The back panel pots are done. On to cleaning up the speaker, then the tuner.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...pszyx2yesm.jpg

I cleaned up the the speaker and re-installed it.

I then decided to clean up the bottom of the chassis a bit. Cleaning up the dirt, rosin splashes, etc. I was thinking how can I get down into the tight spots with my Q-Tips? Then I had the idea of making an extension. One thing about Q-Tips is that they bend when you're really trying to scrub something clean. My extension worked perfectly!

Here are the details.

I used a piece of 5/32 aluminum tubing by K&S. You can get the tubing at a hobby shop, or hardware store. Not sure if Lowe's or Home Depot has this stuff. I then used my round nosed pliers to crimp some detents. I crimped twice and the second set of crimps was 90 degrees to the first and about 3/8 between them. I cut a Q-Tip in half using my cutters and then I push the Q-Tip into the tubing. The detents hold the Q-Tip in place yet it is easily removed and another inserted. The aluminum tubing is small enough in diameter to get the Q-Tip down into some pretty small places.

Another thing I tried with my cleaning tool was to use some lacquer thinner to clean. I used acetone before but lacquer thinner works much better. From now on I'll use lacquer thinner to clean off the rosin on a newly soldered joint.

Here are some pics to show you what I mean.

A close up of the crimped end.
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...pswnbjq29u.jpg

Q-Tips and tubing.
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psyskrrevk.jpg

Ready to dip into the lacquer thinner!
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...pscmmr9qzd.jpg

Finished the tuner today. I managed to changed out all the resisters. I changed out the shielded wire for some nice aircraft grade wire.

I'm almost done with the chassis. Left to do is the doorknob cap, finish mounting the high power resistor in the HV cage when the parts arrive, the dual coil Ion Trap has to be installed, mount a fuse block, and use the correct hardware for the yoke mount.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psakfqatbf.jpg

Took care of some details and this is the picture I have. It seems that the vertical sweep isn't high enough. I changed out the V. Osc and V. output tube (6SN7GT). My V. height pot is maxed and my V. Lin pot is very near maxed out (full CW). There appears to be some rollover at the top. B+ checks very good, HV is very good. I double-checked the component locations and values and they are correct.

Any ideas?

Here is MeTV:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...pss7svwtzp.jpg

Here is my 4:3 test pattern:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psfywsrmse.jpg

And here is video:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psbxywjal9.jpg

Most common offenders tend to be drifted height/lin pots, but you can also futz with the values of the dropping resistors feeding the vertical section B+ to squeeze more height out of it. I have to do that with color sets sometimes, not sure why. For example if there's a 1.8 meg fixed resistor feeding boost voltage to the vertical section and it's in spec but the picture isn't tall enough, I'll stick a 1 meg in there and see what happens. Could be that the magnetic parts of the circuit like output transformer are getting tired, so compensation is required. Not sure, but it seems like giving it a little more voltage to work with is a sensible solution.

You see the ~4 dashes above the man's head, and the 1 above the kid's head? those are closed captioning data which is placed at the VERY top of the picture...The bright part of the picture should be ~3-10 horizontal scan lines away, but is is not (it is much farther). Your video source is giving you a letter boxed and pillar boxed signal (you can see the extra horizontal black bar faintly on the left side as well). It looks like the below where the picture is shrunk by the signal source and black is added around the edges (please excuse the lack of right perimeter VK's posting system dislikes ASCII art making a right border impossible).

Tom,
You're right! Duh. However the problem (if it is a problem) I think I'm having is that there is too little height to the overall picture.

Here another picture of the problem I'm having. I have the brightness turned up pretty good and reduced the contrast pretty low so the quality isn't that good. You see that portion at the top of the picture? Loos like it is scanning but not "painting" anything worth seeing. If it would be painting the picture would be a lot larger. Do you think that doing a full alignment help. I plan on doing one anyway.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2rraf6ye.jpg

Keep in mind this set has a pretty small viewing area. The 4:3 rectangle should almost fit entirely within the CRT face. Only a little of the corners gets clipped. You've got too much width and height. I think that might just be the retrace blanking interval on top.

Bob,
I think I forgot about the small viewing area. Though I have seen Youtube videos fill the entire screen area. In any case I put the mask up against the CRT and centered it and here's what I have now:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1rnszagn.jpg

I think I'll move on to aligning the thing.

Thanks guys.

That looks good. If you want a big round picture you need to get yourself a Zenith Porthole. :D

BTW a lot of pictures have gone missing at the beginning of the thread.

I thought I'd show everybody how I attach the power cord to the HV cage. The previous "technician" had replaced the cord and used JB Weld to hold in the original drilled out rivets. Of course he used way too much and I had to grind out a lot of the JB Weld.

I get the small plastic spacers and rivets from my local ACE hardware store. They are in those bins that are along the hardware aisle. I used plastic spacers that are 1/4 long, 1/4 diameter, with a #6 screw hole. The rivets are 1/8 diameter and 3/8 long. The rivets are a solid shank except for the last 1/16 inch or so.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psn9dnofpn.jpg

I use my heat gun to gently soften the plastic ears and insert the plastic spacers into the plug. If you have a keen eye, you'll see that one of the spacers is for a 4-40 screw while the other is for a 6-32 screw. Later on I removed the 4-40 spacer and inserted a 6-32 spacer. A 4-40 spacer is too small for the 1/8 rivet to pass through.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psd6p4ivsr.jpg

I also use a 4-40 fender washer under the head of the rivet. Here you can see how much of the rivet needs to protrude through the HV cage. Not much at all.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psoyujbcl4.jpg

Once the rivet with the washer is in place, I put the head of the rivet on my bench vise anvil and support the HV cage using empty chip dip containers stacked to the correct height to have the HV cage level. I then use a small tack hammer and a center punch to begin to flare out the rivet. The center punch is the type that is pretty "blunt". Once the rivet firmly set with the center punch, I use a domed shaped bolt head to finish flatten out the rivet. You don't have to beat these rivets real hard. Just some gentle taps with the tack hammer. Here are the tools I use to set the rivet.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...pseuctazqc.jpg

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...pssj5kzcbm.jpg

Here is what it looks like when I'm done setting the rivets.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3nn5pgas.jpg

And the finished product.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psmqfixgid.jpg

I need some help guys. I'm reproducing the labels for this TV. I'm doing the label that goes on the back of the chassis that is a "Caution" label warning not to service the picture tube. I'm guessing that in the lower right hand corner is some small numbers that designates the part number of the label. My label was deteriorated enough that those numbers are no longer with the label.
Is anyone out there that has a 621TS that has a good label that could get me those numbers? Maybe the RCA 630TS sets had the same label?

Thanks.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1ugz8ue7.jpg

932023-1

Thank you Tim.

I have what I need now.

On a slightly different note.

I've read about a database listing all the 621TS known to be in existence. Does anybody know where or who is keeping it?

I was keeping a list but it got to be too much hassle.
Not the least of the problems was the lack of serial numbers from many submissions, without that there's no way to tell if a listing is a duplicate of a set that changed hands.

OK Eric. I could see that would be a real hassle if s/n weren't provided.

Mine is C 003445. I was wondering if it was on the list?

My high voltage caps came in for the doorknob cap.

It was a tight fit because I didn't want to grind out any more than I had too. I used a 1000pf 10Kv cap with a 25-40% decrease of capacity at rated voltage.

I epoxied on the bottom plate and that is curing while I type.

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...ps5r8rxha8.jpg

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psqkqh2cwp.jpg

You're right! In full disclosure the re-stuffed cap leaked. I didn't even mess with it. I took it out and replaced it with a similar cap. Oh well.

It certainly was a good try! I'm a novice, but would've expected it would have worked.

OK, I'm ready to do an alignment. I want to do the Video IF and Sound alignments. Any words of wisdom?

Thanks.

If you have a crystal stabilized rig you can run through video first, then go through audio and make sure it matches up channel for channel. If you don't have crystal stability it doesn't much matter, since you'll likely wind up doing both multiple times till they get close.

OK, here is where I am on the alignment.

The video IF response curve is a bit peaked but I'm getting a great picture.
The audio curves look real good too.

When I'm playing a DVD the picture and sound are great.

When I'm OTA using my converter, the picture is great but the sound is pretty muffled. When I change channel 3 or 2 I get real good strong audio from the local FM stations.

I can't play OTA using channel because there is too much interference with the FM stations.

I tried adjusting the slug for channel 4 and the audio improved but there is still a marked difference between a DVD and OTA audio.

Any suggestions as to where to look? Does the tuner frequencies need tuning on channel 3 and 4?

Thanks.

Well, it looks like my converter is bad. I tried my other converter and had great sound! Too bad the picture quality isn't as good as the one with bad audio.

The good thing is that the TV is playing very well.

Don't those digital converter box thingies have separate composite video and audio outputs that can be run into a high quality agile modulator? I'm assuming the internal modulator is the weak link. Believe it or not I've never dealt with one of those converter boxes as we haven't had any broadcast TV signal entering our home since a few years back when we cut the local cable company off. :eek:

Kevin,
Yes, they do have some separate outputs. I'll give those a try.

I finished making the masters for the labels on the back of the chassis. Now I need to get some of the grey/silvery paper and some off white paper for the "Caution" label. Then run them through my laser printer and then glue them on the chassis. Pictures to follow when I have them printed out.

Here are the labels on the back of the chassis. What do you think?

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...pszt0jxium.jpg

Very professional. :thmbsp: Wanna make a set for my 8TS30? :D

The labels looked great, but they were the wrong color. I went looking for a better match tonight. I didn't find one at least for the adjustment pots. Those labels are a lighter color than the big model and serial number label. I bought some sign vinyl at Michaels and ran it through my Brother laser printer. The labels turned out great! Again the pots labels are a little too dark, but the model/serial number label looks great!
Tomorrow I'll visit some sign shops to see if I can come up with a closer match for the pots and UL labels.
This stuff is called Oracal and is 3mil thick and has a very good adhesive back to it.

Here is an overall view of the back:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psmx9cglz9.jpg

A close up of the model/serial number label:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psawwwthr3.jpg

The pots and UL labels:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...pspo1mny6c.jpg

Side-by-side comparison of the model labels:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psk8ssrpz1.jpg

Side-by-side comparison of the pots label:
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psgrqkcjjq.jpg

Once I get the right color for the pots, I'll give full details and make my files available to anyone that needs them. More details to come.

That looks rather... Excellent! I like that you were able to duplicate the fonts for the various information on this label. And, the Logo etc. is perfect.

Bravo! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks! The labels are very good indeed. Not a perfect match, but pretty close.

I had to order some material today so it'll be a few days till I get the new material and then see if it's a better color. So it'll be about a week till we know. Stay tuned.

Very impressive work. It's so great seeing how a classic set like this looked when it left the factory.

Here is the artwork of the latest iteration:

http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/...psuqiu7hpq.jpg