Some of our volunteers

Some of our volunteers

15 September 2022

June to September 2022 Juke Box Restoration Project

 I keep saying that we are a Repair Cafe, not The Repair Shop. But we broke our “40 minute” limit yet again. 

 Our visitors had travelled from Wimbourne to our June 2022 event, bearing 2 printed circuit boards from their Juke Box. Some of our electronics repairers said that they couldn’t do anything without a circuit diagram and I think they needed the rest of the juke box too. But we have a wizard called Robert who likes to tackle the tricky jobs in his electronics workshop at home.
The owners tell their story:

“The jukebox was my husband’s late parents’. We had many memorable evenings, dancing & singing. Eventually, like everything, it didn’t work anymore. We tried so-called experts in the field but with no joy. I came across the Repair Cafe through the Martin Lewis website. We decided to give it a go. We had nothing to lose. As the next step was sadly going to be landfill, we had exhausted all other possibilities.

We transported the heavy jukebox to Robert’s home address, where he worked wonders on it. They don’t make a Rowe-Ami R-82 jukebox any more and parts are far and few between, if any at all. He made his own memory board and wrote his own program, sent off to China for parts, he took the grille off to paint, removed the old rotted foam and replaced the broken glass on the selection display, Robert even did an ultrasonic clean on the old classic records.

Robert kept us updated on the progress every week.

We cannot thank Robert enough, he went above and beyond, and we are so very grateful to everyone involved. He saved this huge piece of memorabilia from landfill and prevented hazardous substances from leaking out and causing soil and water contamination, harming wildlife and human health.

Once again thank you so much to Robert, Ros and Repair Cafe Weymouth

 ' The Collins'.”

What did Robert get out of it? A real sense of achievement. He produced a one-page summary of the work he did on it. It includes things like:

List of work done on Juke box  “Tried and failed to repair the Memory Unit. It plays sequences such as 130, 131, 140, 141, 150 etc and eventually it plays the selected record when the magazine gets to it. Concluded Z704 (H-7407B) is faulty. This IC (integrated circuit?) is obsolete and unobtainable. Designed new Memory Unit including software. This new board uses a PIC16F723A micro controller instead of the H-7407B.”

 

There’s a lot more on the list and it wasn’t all electronics. For example,  “Bottom base speaker grille was very rusty. Rubbed down and painted black. Rotted foam cleaned out. Broken glass panel replaced with acrylic panel.”




How much did it cost? A donation to Repair Cafe Weymouth. We do not charge for our services.

 *** Why did he do it? I think, because he can. ***

There are 2453 Repair Cafes throughout the world. You can find the location of one near you here: https://www.repaircafe.org/en/visit/

Ros