So I've got somewhat of an unplanned video for you today.
I was taking apart my Atomos Ninja five plus
because it's broken and I wanted to see what the problem was
and if I could fix it.
And then as I was looking into it, I thought, eh
maybe I should film this thing.
And then I spent most of the time coming
up with this crazy overhead camera contraption.
And then I thought, okay
now let's actually put this thing back together
which I think actually be a pretty simple repair.
Hopefully I don't know a lot
about the internal workings of this thing
so that's not what this video's gonna be about.
But I do want to tell you about sort of a flaw I've noticed
in these recorders and that
since posting a BTS of this setup, a bunch of people
in the comments were saying they also had the issue.
So it seems to be
an actual problem with the Ninja fives.
So I already went ahead and took it apart.
And can we see on this camera also
there's just a few screws here and the overhead camera set
up in case you're curious is the Sony 90 millimeter macro
on an a7S III.
And then I have an Aputure MC
and they're all rigged up with some articulating arms
and I've got the iFootage telescopic pole
so I can actually bring the camera
down to the minimum reproduction ratio if I wanted to.
I put a story about this or reel whatever
on Instagram and I posted the video on Twitter.
If you wanna see more about it, check it out.
But anyway, so you see these little standoffs
they're plastic, but on the inside are these little brass
I wanna say that they are maybe not
but they're gold colored little, you know
standoff things that are surrounded
by plastic bits that unfortunately
as you can see are broken and other ones broke off
but they stayed inside their little plastic houses here.
And there are five screws.
So you can see one here and one here that are still intact
but there's another one that's supposed to be up here.
And then two more over here, which we can tell by, you know
looking at the cutout here for the back.
So the issue with this is that this is only
it's a thin piece of plastic and it's just attached
by those screws and the battery goes in here.
So if you by chance have a
have a tall L series battery come out of it
and maybe when you're adjusting the monitor you kind of
you know, put some finger pressure on the battery
or what I did that caused the problem is remember when
I was building that baby monitor
that elaborate baby monitor, I had one of those adapters
you know this type that goes from L series to V mount.
And so you would clip that in here
and then you'd be able to put a V mount battery in the back.
Well even that adds weight.
And then what happens is it slowly
it slowly starts to pull these, I don't know
I guess it just weaken these little plastic bits
and pull them away.
And I didn't drop it, I
didn't put any kind of like shock on it.
It just, they just snap.
It doesn't take that much pressure.
You just kind of just put a little bit of like shear force
on them or whatever and then just rip right off.
And then as I was unscrewing it to get at those two
the one in the top corner over here
which is obviously on the, on the opposite side.
So it's not the same force
it just broke off taking it apart.
So there's gotta be a better way than you can see.
You can see sort of like structurally where the issue is.
Let's see if we can get a closer look at these.
So as you can see they're just very
very thinly coated in plastic.
It's like less than a millimeter thick.
So that means the only point
of attachment between the two halves
of your recorder sandwich together are where these tiny less
than a millimeter bits
of plastic are sort of molded in five different points.
To the other side of the ninja five
this is ninja five plus.
I don't know
maybe the problem is the same on the ninja five.
I think some people commented
that I think the designs are very similar
but I don't wanna misspeak.
Maybe this is only a ninja five plus problem.
Let me know in the comments
if you've had this on a ninja five.
Anyway, I'd much rather see this be fully metal
or have sort of like a metal base plate
on one side that then goes through
and up through the PCB and then screwed in like that.
You know, like how they would do standoffs let's say on a
on a motherboard into a, a PC or something like that.
Because this is just evidently non satisfactory.
I have put hardly any-- So I don't really
know what I'm gonna do to fix this other than you know
try to super glue these back onto where they belong.
And then probably I'll put some super glue all the way
around the outside ridge here just to hold it down.
Won't be able to take it apart afterwards.
There're a lot of work but I mean if I have to
take it apart again, units probably shot anyway.
But before we get into that
I think the other thing that's important to know
of why some people said that once this happened
to them it ended up bricking their recorders.
And I can see that if you look right here
there's a connector that attaches
to the other side right there and we know
that that carries power because the battery goes right here.
It has nothing to do with the SSD.
As you can see the SSD section is completely hollow
because the connector for that is right on board here.
But when you have those modules that can go
on the back into the battery sled part
that data would also be connected through this.
So having this kind
of get pulled away and possibly damage this connector, you know
basically bricks the unit for most people.
Cuz if you don't have power data then what are you gonna do?
Okay, so let's see if we can glue these parts back on.
Let's see where that gets us.
I'm gonna wear gloves
cuz I ain't trying to get super glue all
over my fingers and I'm the type
of person that would glue his fingers together.
So, okay, I'm gonna try
with the gloves off because I'm not feeling very dextrous.
So I've identified where a few of these posts go.
This one goes up here with it facing this way.
Again, I don't even know how to glue this stuff
on because there's very little there
there's like no points of contact here.
So I'm just gonna put a goober that's a lot of glue.
Got that thing where the
where the glue is just consistently just dripping out.
I didn't even squeeze it that hard.
Got I need tweezers.
In case you didn't pick up on it yet.
This is not an instruction guide on how to do this.
This is me just faffing around.
Okay I am gonna use that one as my test one
cuz that's the one that was easiest to know exactly
what angle it goes on
and had the most sort of plastic left over to glue to.
So if this one doesn't stick then I'm just gonna pull it
out and I'm just gonna glue the outside edge
and be done with it.
In the meantime, let's check
and see how strong the two remaining posts are.
So this one actually has quite a bit
of play in it and then this one, that one's strong.
So I've got, you've got like one strong post
and then four wiggly ones that are just sort of standing
off on their own.
So for such a great powerful device, this is kind
of subpar and I'm not just trying to trash on Atomos here.
I love the ninja recorders.
I've been talking about them, so many videos.
So often I use them on multiple cameras.
I think that they're great.
This is just a glaring weakness
in an otherwise like exemplary product.
I think that's why it's so, so important here.
All right, let's see what's going on with this guy.
If it's even gonna stay a little bit. It's not bad.
It feels stronger than the one that I didn't glue.
All right, let's go ahead and try and glue the other ones.
Does somebody else feel
like super glue is single use for them?
Like by the time they open it
and they get it everywhere and all in the cap.
So you get one good go
out of it and then it's, then it's done.
I don't know what this pill bottle's for
it's not going back in there.
Maybe I'm just terrible at it.
Now while we let that one set, This last one's gonna be
much harder because as you can see over here it's broken.
It's not even inside the plastic case anymore.
So I gotta glue the stud back together just in
order to stick it into this.
This isn't gonna work
I'm just gonna end up gluing the whole thing anyway
but let's give it a whirl.
This is the one where I'm gonna end up gluing my fingers together.
So I'm putting at least one glove on.
Good as new!
All right, so we've got five screws to install
and when it comes to gluing it down
there's gonna be an issue too
in which the edge here is much thinner than this.
So we don't get to use all this, you know, purchase here.
We gotta deal with this thin little edge of the backside.
All right, let's go for it.
Try not to glue your fingers, Gerald
You guys wanna start taking some wagers on whether
or not this thing's gonna work when, when I boot it up
after doing this, we need a tiny little Phillips screwdriver.
Let's screw these down.
Let's start with the only one that is trustworthy
which is this one.
All right, that's the strong side done.
Now we got the weak posts over here.
Essentially all I'm hoping the screws are gonna do
is tighten it down enough for the rest
of the glue to do its job and then together, you know
hopefully it'll all be strong enough to work.
This one I'm not certain is gonna do anything
but put the super glue away before something bad happens.
Oh yeah, we should check for glue squeezed out the side.
There's a little bit of glue scuzz
as you can see all along in here, but the rest of the sides.
All right, let's boot it up and see if it works.
All right, let's stick a big battery on the back
of it so we can yank on it a little bit.
There is no flex at all when I pull
on the battery now, so that's good.
Bust open a Gerald undone 18-inch straight cable.
There's a joke here about always be pluggin'
but then also, you know, pluggin' in your own cables.
Get it? Does it turn on? I hear it.
I see something on the screen.
Okay, do we have an image?
There's an image.
Let's press record.
It's recording.
We've got the red box around it. So it's working.
So if you yanked yours apart
which then broke the, the contacts or, or like the
the way that the battery back connects to the
that PCB there.
If that's broken, well then, you know
it's probably no good, but
if it's just that you have a flappy back, you know
seemingly you can super glue it together and it'll be fine.
You can super glue those posts back
on if they break for you too, but it's pretty tedious
and might not necessarily be worth it.
You know what, don't follow any of the advice in this video.
This is, this isn't a guide, I'm just messing around.
But most importantly
what I wanted to get outta this video is Atomos
I love your recorders, but those posts are no bueno.
You can't just have, have it where
if you pull on a battery a little too hard
that your whole monitor breaks.
Like, cuz all I do is I would have it on the camera
like this and I would try to tilt it a little bit
and I would just grab, you know
and sometimes my fingers would go on the
on the battery and I would tilt it like this.
But this finger here, putting pressure
on the battery is what like I could, I hear
I heard it like crack on the inside.
It's like, come on man.
But anyway, it's working.
So we still got a ninja five plus, so that's good.
I would hate to just have it be, you know
garbage because of some broken plastic.
Anyway, I don't know what, why I made this video
but I hope you enjoyed some part of it
and I hope you're having a good day. See ya in the next one.
Alright... I'm done.