Australian Beauty on Parade mech identified

[sentimental salvage]

Just wondering if anyone knows what machine this is from? It’s been sitting in the shed for years and is all I have of it.

[gameswat]

Ha, I just cut one of those belts up last night to use the separate 50 stereo slides for other machines. I also wrecked the same mech about 7 years ago that we had gotten as a spare along with 3 x belts 35 years ago. Unless yours has a 110v motor it will have a 240v one and be an Aussie copy of US machines. Bob Klepner once built a counter model case for this same spare Aussie mech.

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[gameswat]

Aussie copy we sold 30 years ago and I purchased back around 2015. And some of the slides I took from a spare belt of 50 slides as used by this machine.

[sentimental salvage]

Aha, thank you Gameswat. Yep it’s a 220v motor. I have the eyepieces too… Not sure If I want to attempt a rebuild though. Trying to downsize not upsize.

[brigham]

Not a difficult rebuild, though. Especially with the ready availability of MDF/ chipboard/sawdustboard.

[gameswat]

Not a difficult rebuild, though.

Except it is a really fiddly cabinet shape with lots of angles and internal bracketry. I wasn't willing to bother and I have a perfect case sitting here to have copied from! And the mech I scrapped was in perfect condition compared to that above. The other major issue is that belt of slides is looking really tatty. This is color slide film and delicate to say the least. I had four belts total that were pretty nice condition but they nearly all had damaged slides and as they use magnifying lenses any issues are made huge. I spent about 6 mins on each stereo pair I removed from the belt to make them usable as seen above. They were all dusty and some had liquid residue from people spilling drinks over the machine and seeping inside. To clean properly each slide had to be carefully slid out of the card holder, cleaned as much as possible beforehand to stop any scratching on removal, then delicately rubbed with Isopropyl alcohol and clean soft cloth, specific film cleaning solutions were banned many years ago. One slide in each pair has a visual notch to show which side each goes to. I ended up scrapping three of the four belts I had, obviously one is left complete in the machine. It's a time consuming job to swap the belts over anyway so that was only an issue when the machines were on location and locals got bored of the same girls. There are 50 slides to a belt so the machine will show 5 separate lots of 10 per coin.