Do You Lube Mono Rail Movements?

[Captain_joe6]

Thats just the thing, though: solvents and plastics have a shaky relationship, at best, and a lot of the gearing inside your Sinar is plastic. Sinar's idea was that there should be no metal-on-metal contact within the geared systems of the camera. 99% of the time, there is a metal gear and a plastic track, or visa versa. When metals do come into close contact with the camera, there are nylon bushings and bearing surfaces that buffer the movement so that very little wear is encountered.

Like any other precisely-engineered system, it will give a long life of dedicated use, provided it is treated as what it is: a finely-engineered system that requires proper maintenance.

[rdenney]

Sinar service manuals for post-Norma Sinar models are available here:

http://www.image2output-support.com/sinar/

The lubrication materials are shown in the Introduction document. Some symbols in the manuals refer to Molykote, which is a moly-disulfide-fortified lubricating paste for extreme pressure situations. Any good synthetic moly grease should work, I would think. Application is important--most of the points lubricated with Molykote use a brush. "LOSOID" refers to light machine oil, as I recall, applied in a small drop--I would use an applicator intended for clocks to avoid too much lubricant. A star symbol refers to plain white Vaseline.

The service manuals don't tell you how to fix things, really, they just show how things go together and provide critical measurements. They are not tutorial and expect quite a lot of base skills. But they are quite specific about what should be lubricated and what should not.

Never use WD-40 on anything.

Rick "suggesting that readily understanding the service manual is an entrance exam, the failure of which should result in sending it off for a CLA" Denney