noob from New England

[mnementh]

Hi everyone; I'm a retired EE, and this is my first real watch. It's a 6206-8040 Dolphin-back WeekDater with 6206B movement, and EmmyWatch dates it at Feb 1966.


I inherited it from another EE doing a cleanout of a storage unit; it came to me in a drawer unit full of ancient small hand tools and drafting gear from the space-race era. I'm generally a fan of more rugged stuff like the old Fossil Blue/Steel line of "diver" watches (I know, "booo-hisss!", that's okay, I can take it), as I'm pretty hands-on and I still beat a watch up, even pushing 60. I like that I can beat them up and I don't feel bad about it.

That said; after sticking it on a band and wearing it for a couple days to see if it keeps good time (it does), I find myself drawn to its minimalist lines; everything about it is right where it should be. I especially like the crown at 4 and the full day at 6.

So I'm keeping it.

I'll be along to bug peoples after I've had a chance to do some search abuse to see if my questions have already been answered.

Cheers,

mnem
This is where I usually put something pithy.

[dapellegrini]

Welcome! I have one a little like that, but without lume - nice watch!

[Myles]

Welcome, Mnem! That's a nice watch.

[victor]

Welcome mnementh.  Good on you for appreciating the watch.  Where in NE are you?

[mnementh]

Arrived in West Hartford from the madness of Tejas aboot a year ago. Still settling in.

I've started work on the watch; I was going to post some pics along the way as I familiarize myself with the intricacies of these old beasts.

EDIT: Where would be a good place to post this; more as a noob documenting his first attempts and inviting comments and advice? I don't think it would make a really good tutorial, except possibly as a cautionary tale...

Sadly, this WeekDater has already suffered under my hamfisted attempts; I wiped some markings off the chapter ring trying to dab a flake away with a Q-tip dipped in distilled water. dumbass.

I immediately set that aside under cover with the movement while I worked on the big chunk of SS that is the case body. That kind of fiddly-bits work I have some experience with.

I intend to do a little more research on here and consume some videos before I hit the bench again; make sure I don't do more damage. Most of my watch repair experience is with electronic variants, which are generally not nearly as delicate a thing as this. My most recent adventure was with a NOS generic Miyota quartz movement refit into a Nixon RotoLog, seen here in the triaging phase. It is one of the prizes of my collection.


Also my bench is primarily an electronics tinkery workspace, so probably a fair bit short of what most here would consider "minimum required equipment".

Thanks for the warm welcome, guys!

mnem
"time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so." ~Ford Prefect

[cd_god]

[leffemonster]

[inboost]

mnementh - Glad to have you here and contributing right from the start, way to go my man!  Ahh, an E.E. you say? I am certain we'll chat here and there about wrist electronics.  Here I've hacked a wall clock movement to take a function generator input for testing an old piece of equipment (Seiko QT-2100 on the left). I'm just as much at home soldering as I am fitting a mechanical watch together. Seems you'll soon be there too after your 6206-8040 project draws you in!

Welcome!

Inboost

[mnementh]

Oooh... trying to see if the cause of death is the crystal or the COB blob? I've used a cheap Lo-Z FET probe to test for signs of life/heartbeat with good success on a lot of my consumer electronics tinkery. It usually does not disrupt the oscillator if it is working.

FWiW, in consumer electronics, COD for inexplicably nonresponsive CPU is a duff crystal (or the surrounding ceramic caps) a lot more often than you'd think.

mnem

[inboost]

In this case no - it's a zombie movement I'm using to simulate rate drift in a quartz movement. I've plucked out the crystal and then replaced it with a signal generator full well knowing the impedance of the probes involved is skewing it badly. I just need to make it go fast or slow for data collection purposes. We're working on trying to simulate the original printer and are generating known data to decode the output.

For a time I was trying to tune watches with a low impedance capacitance FET probe connected and dialing to exactly 32,768Hz but this was flawed as it seems the level of precision needed to get it right is 0.001Hz and none of my counting gear is that good in the kHz measurement range. Truth be told the ancient trimmer caps aren't really up to the job anyway.  The inductive measurements are non-intrusive and I have fared much better with them. Of course all of these are temperature sensitive and even moving from room temp to wrist temp skews them. My tuning goal is to have a stable room temp that has the least amount of drift so as the watches sit they keep the best time they can. Then if worn for a day they usually speed up and correct any negative drift they have had.

Indeed bad crystals (from shock) or capacitors (from age) are often the fault of a dead quartz watch, but I find most of the time it's corrosion from battery containment failures and the various attacks we get for a result of that corrosive fluid laying on the boards and components for years. I struggle trying to find good replacement capacitor values as the old ones are unmarked and flawed and when measured (off board and out of circuit of course). On corroded SMD chips I often don't get reasonable values with my measurement gear.

This poor guy had such a fault and I almost got him back but board layer faults ended the quest: Casiotron S-14

And this Seiko A708 module really was an internal CPU fault: Seiko A708-5000 Modules Acting Up

[mnementh]

Took a look at your linked projects... Quite good sleuthing there!

I'm a member of a vintage TE collectors' group elsewhere; here I'm trying to decipher the video from a 54621D mainboard to see if the very similar monitor from a 54600A can be hacked to run on it. Turned out the 54621D uses a bastard form of monoVGA; the 54600A uses strictly TTL like my 54645A. Was fun to at least try, tho.

mnem
you'll never see my bench that tidy again.

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[inboost]

I am Seriously jealous of that heap of test gear!!!! I also very much applaud you on your conservation of old technology and attempts to repair it. If there was one thing I could say I loved the most it's saving something that was broken and was destined for the scrap heap.

 I'm not at the level of decoding video by any stretch of the imagination, and you should know I'm a Mechanical Engineer by degree (of several decades ago) so I'm not institutionally allowed to go anywhere near electronics. Yet much of my career has been spent repairing simple electronics problems.

[mnementh]

Here's the after shot: 3 generations of the game-changing HP 546xxx MegaZoom family. Quite a legacy in the industry, these machines; they set the benchmark by which many aspects of DSOs are still judged today.

mnem
  

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[mnementh]

Got some contract work coming, so the workspace got a bit of a refresh to improve workflow.

mnem
*juicy*

[mnementh]

Cooking is another thing I do. This is a 8lb pork shoulder roast; soy sauce & seared (dwagon-style, of course ), then rubbed in my favorite concotion of spices. Now in the oven at 300° to bring it up to temp quickly, then add veggies, drop temp and the ol' Texas Crutch to finish it off in time for dinner.

mnem
sssssmokin'...

[inboost]

The man has a hanger for his DVOM test leads, yet not an oscilloscope probe in sight. Hmmm.... Highly suspicious

[mnementh]

Well, I have a few here on the shelves... but those are mostly older and specialty stuff for test jigs, automotive, and dev work from my whirry little flying thing habit.





Most of the ones I use most often are there in the drawer. Many of them are quite expensive, and some are vintage high-BW made with unobtanium parts, so I do not leave them out unless I'm using them. The "rack for my meter leads" is actually a caddy I printed several years ago for these three DMMs; sometimes the exact meters on it change with the work at hand.

And then there's the overflow "Probe-ageddon" box...

mnem
tzzzzzt.

[inboost]

[mnementh]

mnem
that is all.

[jeremyclarson]

Hello mnem!  Also from NE, up in Vermont!  Seriously jealous of your workbench setup.  I'm a systems engineer, so i don't get too far into the weeds (we're jacks of all trades, masters of none afterall), but I know my way around an oscope.  And I recognize that Fluke yellow anywhere!