Now when I was a kid back in the 1980s
one of my favorite toys was the Armatron from Radio Shack
Armatron is out of this world, Mason! Over!
Roger, Roger! Here comes...
You can see it here in the 1984 Radio Shack catalog for 31 dollars and 95 cents.
So, I bought one on eBay recently for $20 with free shipping.
I thought it was a good deal, even though it said it was broken.
I thought it would be a challenge to fix it up and restore it.
So, here it is. It even came with the little cylinders and stuff that you're supposed to manipulate with it.
If you look up close, you can see this thing is filthy and will need some cleanup.
I thought I would go ahead and test it out, and when I opened up the battery compartment
I saw the terminals were very corroded. Somebody probably left batteries in this thing too long.
Still, I put some batteries in it and turned it on, and...
It wouldn't do anything at all. My guess is the battery corrosion is the culprit.
So, time to disassemble this thing. It looks like this will be an easy few screws on the bottom,
however, it became clear that it must be disassembled from the top first.
So, I headed into unknown territory and started removing screws from the top side.
I noticed the arm went limp once it was removed from the base.
Okay, so I finally got a look inside.
The electronics in this thing are surprisingly simple, there's only a single motor with a single on/off switch.
Everything else appears mechanical in nature.
I wanted to find out if the motor worked.
So, I attached some alligator clips to the positive and negative, and then I touched them to the batteries to see
if it would come to life.
And, it did not disappoint.
So, next I desoldered the wires from the corroded battery terminals.
Whoever soldered this one at the factory might have gone overboard, so I'll desolder from the motor side.
So, on with further disassembly.
Wow, this thing is crazy looking!
Looking at this pit reminds me of something, but I'm not sure what...
So, underneath that reveals a nightmare of gears. Now I'm thinking it reminds me of something else...
Really, you are! You're gorgeous! Look at that!
Space-age clockwork! I love it! I've got chills!
This scares me even to touch this jigsaw worth of gears, mostly for the fear that I'll never get it back together again.
But, I have a secret for dealing with that, which I'll show you later.
So, here it is, totally disassembled.
Okay, the next step was to work on these battery terminals.
I like to use vinegar for this, as it's cheap and usually pretty effective for an overnight treatment.
I came back a few hours later and scrubbed the terminals with a brush.
And then I continued to let it sit for another 24 hours.
While waiting on that, I took the opportunity to clean up these plastics.
There's really no secret here, just a lot of scrubbing with paper towels and Windex,
and occasionally some alcohol.
OK, so here we are 24 hours later. The terminals look a lot different now, although still have a sort of rusted appearance.
I decided to throw some batteries in there and test it with a volt meter.
And it does appear they are making electrical contact now, but
I decided I wanted to polish them up just a bit better, so I got out my Dremel with the wire brush on the end.
This cleaned the metal right up.
I was also irritated at the appearance of the little joystick controls. They were rusted.
First, I tried just scrubbing with alcohol and a paper towel, and surprisingly, they cleaned right up.
Okay, there was only one thing left to do at this point, and that was to reassemble this nightmare of gears.
So, what's my secret for putting this thing back together?
Well, fortunately I took detailed pictures of each step of disassembly
so that I have a record of how everything goes back together.
I mean, seriously, if I didn't have that, I would never have been able to put this back together again.
I decided to use a new piece of wire for the negative terminal.
I think the original one was corroded inside.
Soldering this connection was super-easy, so was the motor side.
But, this huge wad of solder, dang, it took me a while to heat this up but eventually it worked.
I was tempted to remove some of the solder, but I wasn't sure if maybe there was some actual reason they did it this way from the factory.
Okay, so, before I went any further, I decided to put the batteries in and see if it would turn on.
I can hear the motor spinning, so, I decided to put a lever in place and see if any of the gears would spin.
And, so far everything seems to be working, so
I added back the stalk piece and conducted further testing.
So far, so good.
Time to reassemble some more.
Now it was at this point that I discovered something unfortunate.
See this little pin here? I thought this was just a structural component,
but eventually I realized that it spins when using one of the controls.
So, I took the stalk apart and had a look and it was obvious there was a plastic gear missing.
After reviewing my earlier footage, it was apparent that the gear was missing all along, so it's not like I broke it
but apparently, the thing had more than one problem with it.
Now, after further investigation, I realized that that particular gear helps control the claw opening and closing.
So, there's really not a whole lot I can do about that right now.
I went ahead and bought another unit exactly like it for $20 on eBay and hopefully I'll be able to scavenge parts from it.
In the meantime, I wanted to put this thing back together and test everything else out.
These little hoses are purely cosmetic, they don't actually do anything.
So, you can see it all cleaned up, and surprisingly looks brand new again.
Let's see how much of it actually works.
I used have these controls well memorized, but it's been 30 years since I've played with one of these.
It's coming back, though.
So, basically, the only thing that doesn't work is the ability to open and close the claw.
Okay, so I do have a second unit just like this one on the way.
And hopefully, it won't have the exact same part broken that this one has.
So, I will be putting that in there and getting it fixed up.
It occurs to me that I've done quite a few videos in the past where I kind of left a loose end hanging out, and
So, I got to thinking about it. I'm like, you know, in the near future, what I need to do, after I get this fixed
is kinda come back and just do an update on a lot of different projects.
You know, just say "Well here's how this turned out, how this is holding up, here's how this turned out, etc.
So, I will be doing a follow-up like that. In the meantime,
I have been asked to do this video
a thousand times, and, you're gonna get it. Here it is, here it is...
Ow...
Dang, this thing is heavy!
I have been asked to do a video of the PowerMac G5
a thousand times, so here it is. I finally managed to get one.
This is the QuadCore, last of the power PC units ever made
Stick around for that next time!
*static*