VCR lube: PTFE for plastics? Lithium grease for metal?
 

A lot of newer lubrication products are on the market today, and some old standby's are almost impossible to find. So, I'd like to learn what is known about the materials available today, to be applied to keeping vintage VCR's running well. (My particular passion right now is my Panasonic AG-5710... and I'll soon be cleaning up my 8mm film capture workflow which needs some love as well.)

I have a can of PTFE dry lube (aka Teflon). What I've read says this is safe on all plastics except polycarbonate and polystyrene. What say you?


For the metal-on-metal sliders, Panasonic used to recommend their Molytone Grease, no longer available, and SCR Grease for the Main Cam Gear (Metal on plastic). Is White Lithium grease an acceptable alternative, or perhaps a dielectric grease would be safer?

Dielectric grease is for sealing connectors by keeping moisture and dirt from entering mating surface of connectors, It is not recommended for mechanisms where friction occurs, There are mixed opinions on greases for mechanical parts whether plastic-plastic, metal-plastic or metal-metal. The ones that last long and don't dry up sooner are the ones that have copper or aluminum base, Basically a fine powder of copper or aluminum mixed with a lubricant to a certain consistency, The drawback of those greases is they are little abrasive in the long run, Other type of greases are soft but do tend to dry up over time.

Honestly, for personal use where the machine doesn't get used that much it doesn't really matter, For heavy use such as a capture business it may matter what type of grease is used, But it is usually safe to stick to the manufacturer recommendation in the service manual and if the exact type of grease is not available anymore do a search on that type of grease to find the chemical and mechanical characteristics and find a close match.

Thanks for your thoughts, @latreche34 !That's exactly why I was considering a PTFE-based dry lubricant. Nothing to dry out, and not abrasive ;)


I've done some more research. The Panasonic MolyTone grease is almost certainly a mineral oil-based Moly+Bentonite grease. Unfortunately, it tends to harden over time. A number of experts out there specifically anti-recommend going with anything of the kind because of that long term characteristic. :(


The most interesting alternative to MolyTone MOR265 I've seen now is a non-Silicone, PTFE-based grease, Super-Lube. Easily available everywhere. Very similar low-viscosity characteristics, acts as a dielectric (ie non-conducting), etc. Here's the TDS: [FONT=Lucida Sans Unicode, Tahoma, Geneva, Lucida, Lucida Grande, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]https://www.super-lube.com/Content/Images/uploaded/documents/TDS/Technical_Data_Sheet_Multi_Purpose_Grease.pdf[/FONT]


I've NOT found specs on the main cam gear grease (VFK0680). Lots has disappeared from the Web by now. :(


For spindle oil lubrication, supco also makes a synthetic oil with PTFE. Not sure if that's as highly recommended...
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UPDATE with more info:
I see that Super-Lube was used and recommended right here a few years ago, as a Moly substitute.

And, for spindle oil: I've found two recommendations, one of them also here: Singer All-Purpose Machine Oil (currently on sale at Michael's for $5 for 4oz ;) ), and Supco mo98 lubricant (in a zoom spout oiler.) Also easily available.

FWIW, I've orderd some Super-Lube and some MO98. We'll see how it goes.

I've used the Superlube with PTFE multi-purpose Grease and some hardware store white "synthetic PTFE grease" to lubricate moving mechanism parts and both seems to work well so far at least. Don't think that was as much of an option in the early 90s but for later vcrs panasonic seems to have switched to using this transparent yellow/brown-ish "Floil grease" (which has VFK1298A part no in the R4 mechanism manual) instead.

Used some sewing machine oil for spindle stuff, haven't had any issues with it but I've only used it once or twice so can't really say for sure.

Just as a tip, for oil I use a syringe with a bent needle to access any point in the mechanism without needing too much space, works better than a plastic spout or neck, just be careful not to push too hard on the piston, one or two drops is all you need.

GREAT idea :)

Presumably bent needle gets around corners etc.