Philips AZ-6892 Restoration

serge1996

A few months ago I snatched one dead AZ-6892 from UK seller. Off eBay of course. Here is the Beauty, as received:

I was hoping for an easy fix, my reasoning being that since I really-really want this Philips for my collection, the Gods of PCDPs will smile at me. And they did: this player is a pleasure to work with: simple and easy layout, no soldered battery compartment or flex boards, two aged electrolytics leaked out in plain sight and without damaging the board.

The only minor problem was that it was insistent on staying dead. So I took a closer look at its laser mechanism (Philips RCD2) and did not like what I saw. Two screws to remove the objective lens revealed the horrors of a 30 y.o. aluminum case:


Aluminum oxides grow like fungi, dichroic mirrors got pushed from their original positions, laser path almost clogged:


Other than that, a pretty well thought out mechanism, similar to Sony KSS-220. With one exception, it did not age well.


An appropriate title from Jim Morrison ballad: "This Is The End"

kaosun

Replace and clean PCB, lubricate VR.
Clean oxide inside of the laser, you probably can save its life.

kaosun

Since you've already disassembled the laser, you can thoroughly clean its inside and better paint inside with a black maker. When you assemble it, it should not ready for reading disc. If you need precise laser alignment, you can send it here with other players.

serge1996

It is beyond resurrection, unfortunately...   
I pulled out Philips AZ-6804 from the stash of players I failed to fix and its laser (also RCD2) has similar problem. With object lens off you can clearly see that aluminum is getting bad:


well, at least this one can still be restored to its original state:


Since I spent a good part of my professional career playing with microscopes, I have seen some "seriously disturbed" optics. Even Zeiss (West Germany, I am not even talking about Karl Zeiss Jena) sometimes used infamous Soviet "tank grease" oil on their objectives. The result was opposite to what we see here: brass parts were "eaten" by the grease. Now I am curious: do all Philips RCD2 mechanisms got this bad over the years??!

Kaosun is right: cheapies do not bother to blacken the insides of the optical path. In my younger days we used burning Xylene, it gives the flattest and blackest black imaginable. Flat black marker works well too.

kaosun

Don't lose any component or they'll never be repaired.

serge1996

No, I won't. Actually, my curiosity was so bad that I bought another Philips with this RCD2 laser. Exactly the same thing: it misaligned because of oxidized Aluminum!

PHILIPS380

顾师傅你好！这个RCD2的激光头的两个反射镜片是不是有方向的？我的6811原来是可以读碟的，拆下这两个镜片清理就读不了碟了，请问是什么原因？谢谢！

kaosun

Yes, you couldn't place the lenses up side down; otherwise the laser won't read.