24 Jul 2012, 23:06
A while back I posted my efforts to bring back to life old Pulsars with determination. This time it's Riehl's turn. 
About 3 months ago I took a punt on buying a box of old Synchronars from Barry Riehl. When the box arrived I was not too surprised to find a fair amount of badly corroded internals:
Here's a pretty poor example:
However amongst the carnage there were a few modules that looked promising along with some nice parts like a new Lexan case, new solar panel, new switches, inner and outer case and literature.
I always prefer to repair so I spent many an evening pouring over a microscope and silver epoxy and that awful goo that is synonymous with Synchronars !.
At best I had a watch with missing segments albeit original not good enough I thought.
Most of the recovered modules comprised of open wire bonded chips and displays, but there was one with a litronix type display....Hoorah there’s hope yet !
My first step was to start designing the PCB. I took my time and fistly got the dimensions correct which was aided by an original PCB Barry had provided.
This PCB stretched me little further as it has milled slots,is an odd shape and has very little room for components due to the Varta batteries. However my usual perseverance paid off and a week later a nice parcel arrived from the manufacturer.
Next step was to mount all the components with the trusty Weller iron and microscope and the magical solder paste.
Next…Enter my new friend programming. My first attempts kept being thwarted mainly due to crap reed switches, strong magnets, weak magnets….arrggghh.
I decided that it was time to build a jig with normal switches thus allowing me to program with some certainty. I can add the reeds at the end when I know the code is good.
I have already learnt a fair bit of programming with my Pulsar rebuilds however I had to learn a few more subroutines so I could implement Synchronar features like DOW with characters, freq adjust and leap year.
I struggled to understand the Synchronar leap year implementation; I could not understand how to set it, so I scoured this forum and found my answer. It seems that you don’t set the leap year it’s done at the factory. Again not good enough, I have made mine settable.
A number of weeks passed and I managed to program the code as per the setting instructions for a MK3 Synchronar posted again on this forum.
Here’s some pictures:
The Rawsar S3 module:
Solar panel and reeds installed (Reeds were redone many times !!!!!)
Base and Lexan top stuck together with Silicon:
Assembly time….strap re-brushed and case cleaned:
Happy days:
Leap year and speed set:
In it’s new home:
Stay tuned for my next LED watch adventure………………….
About 3 months ago I took a punt on buying a box of old Synchronars from Barry Riehl. When the box arrived I was not too surprised to find a fair amount of badly corroded internals:
Here's a pretty poor example:
However amongst the carnage there were a few modules that looked promising along with some nice parts like a new Lexan case, new solar panel, new switches, inner and outer case and literature.
I always prefer to repair so I spent many an evening pouring over a microscope and silver epoxy and that awful goo that is synonymous with Synchronars !.
At best I had a watch with missing segments albeit original not good enough I thought.
Most of the recovered modules comprised of open wire bonded chips and displays, but there was one with a litronix type display....Hoorah there’s hope yet !
My first step was to start designing the PCB. I took my time and fistly got the dimensions correct which was aided by an original PCB Barry had provided.
This PCB stretched me little further as it has milled slots,is an odd shape and has very little room for components due to the Varta batteries. However my usual perseverance paid off and a week later a nice parcel arrived from the manufacturer.
Next step was to mount all the components with the trusty Weller iron and microscope and the magical solder paste.
Next…Enter my new friend programming. My first attempts kept being thwarted mainly due to crap reed switches, strong magnets, weak magnets….arrggghh.
I decided that it was time to build a jig with normal switches thus allowing me to program with some certainty. I can add the reeds at the end when I know the code is good.
I have already learnt a fair bit of programming with my Pulsar rebuilds however I had to learn a few more subroutines so I could implement Synchronar features like DOW with characters, freq adjust and leap year.
I struggled to understand the Synchronar leap year implementation; I could not understand how to set it, so I scoured this forum and found my answer. It seems that you don’t set the leap year it’s done at the factory. Again not good enough, I have made mine settable.
A number of weeks passed and I managed to program the code as per the setting instructions for a MK3 Synchronar posted again on this forum.
Here’s some pictures:
The Rawsar S3 module:
Solar panel and reeds installed (Reeds were redone many times !!!!!)
Base and Lexan top stuck together with Silicon:
Assembly time….strap re-brushed and case cleaned:
Happy days:
Leap year and speed set:
In it’s new home:
Stay tuned for my next LED watch adventure………………….
