I Can't Even Tell How This Watch Demagnetizer Works!

ladies and gentlemen welcome back to amateur repair time today we're going to work on this beautiful item here this is a magnaflux instantaneous demagnetizer have you ever even heard of such a thing So lately you know I've been working on radios and clocks mainly uh record players a little bit and trying to learn about them um but lately I've been messing with watches a little bit so for instance I've got this pocket watch here little little cheap little dollar watch it's an Ingram Viceroy whatever Viceroy means and I've got it running but uh these things weren't really known for keeping great time they lose several minutes of a day usually and um the parts were kind of cheap so they wear and then they lose more time and stuff like that uh but one of the reasons that a a a watch will lose time or gain time is because usually I think it's lose time uh will be is because it's magnetized so I was talking to my friend Matt about this and he was saying well I thought brass didn't hold magnetism and I don't know about that but the little spring in there the the little hair spring so that spring is winding up back and forth right and that's what kind of pushes the the balance wheel around and makes the whole thing work well if that spring gets magnetized um it'll stick together or be drawn to stick together or whatever and it'll change the speed that the watch runs at so all that to say it's good to have a demagnetizer so this thing is actually made for that it's also made for tools so you can take like a little screwdriver that the tips became magnetized and put it on here and demagnetize it so these are real helpful for doing watch repair putting the movement on so I bought this thing this is like a kind of high-end one believe it or not um I usually don't want high-end stuff but this thing I got a good deal on and I thought it was cool and it didn't work so I figured we could fix it so this was on eBay and again it's the magnaflux instantaneous demagnetizer you hit this button and it [Music] goes and it demagnetizes everything it's the same as what we use on or it's very similar to what we use on Arcade monitors whenever we do the um the dealing ring if you've ever seen that we've got a big ring and we hit a button and it creates an electromagnet I guess and that fixes um we use that to fix uh uh dealed or is it galed uh monitor tubes where they the colors are all screwed up because of magnetism so it says a troop Ballas product troop Bas product b jadow Inc New York City distributors that'd be interesting all right so there's a button on it and it's a it's a bad button look at this it's like blow up the outside world and then it's got a jeweled bulb okay and it's got like a what seems to be like a balite case it's got four little feet on the bottom that are like plastic like a plastic rubber that rubbery filling plastic um and then it has this little label I figured we'd read it we'd try it and then we'd take it apart what do you think so it says true bass and co Philadelphia six Pennsylvania whatever that means patents pending lab atories Ariel New Jersey so this must have been a huge company think about it they're in Philadelphia the Laboratories are in New Jersey and the things are distributed in New York New York City okay so let's read this troop bass what kind is that Italian or something and my Italian's not great instantaneous demagnetizer the new troop blast and Company magnaflux demagnetizer works on an N Dash entirely different principle in removing magnetism from watches tools inw Dash mints and precision Parts such as those found in the watch industry and D instrument trades I always have found it weird that back in the day whenever they would hyphenate words they would just break it anywhere in the word when they could have just changed I guess they couldn't change the spacing [Music] because of the way things were printed I don't I don't know you know it's before computer so you couldn't really quickly change spacing or anything but like uh so they they put E N Dash tirely so entirely but then if you look there I guess the spacing is the same uh and this was N I N St Dash [Music] mint okay building up a high voltage and storing it in a capacitor until needed this charge is released by pressing a switch sending the surge into a specially engineered coil assembly to produce a magnetic flux intensity more than twice that of other capacitance demagnetizers and more than 18 times that of some air core demagnetizers in use today thus items which were ndem magnetizable before may now be easily demagnetized that's right with this bad boy you can demagnetize things that were ndem magnetizable before to use Place watch or object to be demagnetized in the center of the target area Place small objects into a small box so that they will not jump and be lost they'll go all across the room when you blow up the outside world with that button I want to see that I want to see the crap we're going to try to make stuff jump off of it because if if that's a thing it will be a thing I get on video only one surge of flux is needed in most cases this must have been what uh the good doc was using to get go back to the future in objects of unusual shape or cases of wide magnetic dispersion another surge may be desired if so wait 5 Seconds between pressing the switch for full voltage to build up this thing sounds dangerous as hell I love it and they made the button metal awesome the magnetic flux surge is instantaneous and while there can be no harm in holding the switch button down the storage capacitor will not start to charge up until the button is released the unit may be left plugged in continuously since it uses less current than that used by an electric clock and then unfortunately I can't read the unit number all the way unit number 105 -50 number missing 94 I wonder if they didn't I wonder if there's a dash there past the 500 because they knew that that was going to wear away what you think like you know when you were writing on it you would see that there's a bump there so maybe you wouldn't write a number on the bump you'd put a dash or something and then we can dream can't we all right so that's pretty cool so this looks to me with this pressed board but with the plastic or B aite whatever it is case I'm going to say 40s I'm going to say late 40s early 50s what do you think is that too early I don't think it's any earlier than that so I'm going to say 1948 that's my final guess 1948 so all right so we're going to take it apart and look inside and there may be a date on the cap or something so let's plug it in and see if it does anything so you see what they say uh you just press the button and then you have to wait 5 Seconds till the next time all right so uh let's see if it does anything I will say it has a modern power cord on it which I'm I don't like cuz that means somebody's been in there that power cord there's no way that's from the 40s there's no way that's from the 70s um it's in such good shape well that might be from the 70s okay so somebody's already been in it and so the light's not on I don't know if it goes on when you hit the button whenever it does The Flash if the bulb comes on I would think that the bulb would be on and then you hit the button and it the bulb goes out what I would think nothing so let's put some trash on it here just to make sure cuz if it's working from what I understand the stuff will fly across the room it might be working just fine let's try it [Laughter] again oh man it's working the bulb just isn't working so they sold it to me is not working I'm just trying to make sure that I'm not that hitting this isn't making the stuff jump look that that's not going to do it if I do that it doesn't do it right so it's not it's not that this thing's actually [Laughter] working well that's cool so I think the bulbs just burn out can we can we uh get that out from the top we're still going to open it up because why not yeah I think the bulb's just out um it must be doing whatever it does or that stuff wouldn't be jumping like that so let's try with the yeah definitely definitely right or maybe this place is haunted okay that's probably not it all right um let me see if I can get that bulb out of there okay so I was able to get the bulb out of the top we're unplugged by the way and I hit the button so hopefully this sucker's drained if not you may never see this video okay so I um I uh pulled the bulb out it's a pinball bulb actually it's a number 47 and I checked the um the resistance across the bulb and it seems like it's fine it looks like it's fine too so I'm wondering if there's just something a wiring problem or something so let's see how this thing works so the power comes in through here they have it attached here and here yeah yeah I think somebody's repaired it at some point I think I'm I think I'm way too early on the date of this thing but that's fine okay is that it's saying something up there or is that just worn let's see well if it ain't written in hieroglyphics that's just worn so so the power comes in one side goes over here to this big cap it's kind of hard to see I don't want to break anything I'd like to leave it together as much as possible okay so one side goes there and then that there is a wire jumping off of there the little metal wire go into that which what is that is that one of those old silicon rectifiers I don't know I have no clue okay and then the other side goes to the switch I believe um and the switch has three wires that's fun let me look at that a little closer well I've been going through it's plugged in right now by the way so don't touch it I've been going through it and looking at everything and checking voltages I can't see anything wrong with it other than the bulb won't light up but it it kind of seems like and by the way I'm like five inches away from it it's an optical illusion uh it kind of seems like that the bulb is only supposed to light up whenever the the the magnetic field disappears or whatever so I think maybe it the bulb is supposed to flash when the the coil does its thing but I've never seen any kind of design like this so if you look on the bulb one of the legs has the AC attached to it from that switch um so you can measure 120 volts ac on either leg because you know the bulb is basically a 4 ohm resistor so that's about 4 ohms resistance across the bulb so since it's just sitting here you got 120 volts on both sides of that if you compare it to the other uh AC line that comes in if you check the volt voltage on the green and the brown wires right you have no voltage because it's got the same voltage on each leg so there's no 6vt differential to make it light up and they attach over here so the the brown wire isn't connected to anything except the bulb and it comes back over here and it's connected to that lug right there it's connected through that resistor resistor I can't check that resistor but it seems fine because well I want hm you know it could be that that resistor is completely fried I can't test it in circuit because if you look it's actually connected across the coil so one leg the brown wire connects there to that side of the resistor the other side of the resistor is on this capacitor on the common terminal right there is also a wire that you can barely see but it snakes down under it that's brown and white that connects to this side of the coil so this coil is connected to the green the brown wire and it's connect um it's connected to the brown wire and it's connected to the other side of this resistor so this resistor goes parallel with the coil um I don't understand the design of that but that's what's going on okay and then the green wire okay I told you wrong okay so the green wire connects to one side of the coil the coil is like 4 Ohms or whatever it is well I don't even know I guess I need to check that next and then it connects over to the common which connects through this resistor to the green so when I check this resistor instead of getting uh what I believe is so that's 10 it's 100,000 Ohm resistor is that right let me think that's a 20 2K I believe I'm I'm running through the little nasty lmer in my head um or not Limer whatever it's called so it's 22 three yeah 22,000 so that's a 22,000 Ohm resistor and it checks out as that in circuit uh which would make this one a 220,000 yeah no no no not a 220,000 a 10 and then four zeros so 100,000 so this 100,000 Ohm resistor but it checks as like you know 100 ohms or something so it's probably just checking the resistance of the coil um but I don't even understand how that would make the bulb light up anyway so the the the bulb maybe it's some kind of error thing or something maybe it just lights up if there's a problem I don't know but the bulb has 4 ohms resistance across the terminals with the bulb in if you take the bulb out there's no resistance across the two terminals these two are capacitors there's uh five capacitors basic so this is common and 0.1 and one and then this one is common 0.1 and one but it's also a resistor I suppose approximately 630m yeah I don't want to mess with it too much because obviously I don't know what I'm doing amateur repair time has its limits so this says 380 and they've marked it out and put 420 so I'm wondering if that's a 380 microfarad capacitor uh and then they measured it and it's actually 420 so any of you people that took um that took um um electrical engineering or anything or even a probably an entry level in U Electronics class can probably tell what this design is but I cannot for the life of me okay so then you've got these up here those look like the old school diodes to me so I think those are silicon rectifiers and that one not is it silicone I think that's right that one looks pretty rough so when I check over here I've got 120 volts where this resistor connects I've got like 9 volt in the middle and then 120 volts on the other side and then that connects over to there so I'm going to see if I've got 120 there and blah blah blah so I'm just going to check all those Terminals and see if I've got voltage on all of them or if that last one maybe is screwed up okay so I clean that off a little bit but you know uh so then I started thinking it kind of looks like a bridge rectifier it looks like they've got four areas and it looks like a primitive diode which is how Bridge rectifiers made so I've got 120 here here here and here or it ends up being like 112 or something it changes a little bit but I've got a high voltage AC on these on both of these I've got a lower voltage AC so this one's like 16 this one's like 13 but if I check DC I've got like 144 here and if I check from here to there I get like 144 so it's it's creating a DC voltage I just don't know what you know what they're doing with it so it comes over here to this capacitor so I just don't get what's going on this is the common of the capacitor if I drew it all out on a circuit I might be able to tell it a little bit better but I'm I'm just not uh I'm reaching the limits of my abilities here so you've got one of the lines of the AC comes in and connects down there and then connects through this resistor which is a 220 so it's a 22 a 220 Ohm resistor to there then it connects with a capacitor to both of the 144 volt what I'm getting is 144 volt like I said if I drew it out I could probably see it better but even then I don't know that it would help much I don't even know that the light's supposed to come on it's a nice light with a jewel face you would imagine that it must do something okay so the other one comes in and connects here to this can this cap but it also connects to what I think is the bridge rectifier so it connects there so so the one AC is connected through [Music] capacitors to the what I think are DC voltages and then the other AC is directly connected to the what I'm calling the bridge rectifier look you've got two of the legs tied together usually the other two are tied to the other side of the AC but that's not tied to that or are it I'll be damn it kind of is isn't it I don't know folks I just don't understand it but you know what I do understand maybe I can tell if it's working by seeing if some I can demagnetize something okay folks I plugged it back in and put it all back together um so let's test and see if it's doing what it was already doing yep maybe even better maybe it's better because I um I um cleaned off that diode or that rectifier whatever it is what do you think so I have a little cheap screwdriver it's all rusty and I think it's magnetized yeah it's magnetized then it's not supposed to be magnetized man it's pretty strongly magnetized okay wait you think did that work I have seen it all I have seen it all we just did electrical mag uh Magic electronic magic right there in front of your face I wish there was a fancy Dancy light to show you that it worked but you just saw it work now can you even you can't even there's no way you can argue there's no way you can argue that that didn't work of course that worked you just saw it you just saw it work folks okay so I think what I'm going to do is there is an app you can get on your phone and you can you can get it near things and there's a compass they can use the compass on your phone with or the there's some kind of magnets on your phone believe it or not um it can it can it can tell if something's magnetized you're act there's you can actually download an app to do this so I'm going to download an app and I'm going to see if that watch is magnetized I think about all of them are and then we're going to zap it and see if that stopped it from being magnetized or that's the plan man okay so I did do it I used the the little app and I took a screenshot and I uh just showed it to you so that's what it told me this so basically it said zero I put this clock on the screen this watch on the screen just like this and now it said that number which was 254 or whatever so we're going to zap it one time and just see what the reading is after that wow wonder if that made it that might have automatically made it sound a little better who knows okay so I'm going toh do the same thing calibrate the little app and then I'm going to test it again and see what it says well as you can see from the the pictures it didn't demagnetize anything on the watch so I'm wondering if watches just have an inherent magnetism that that app is going to pick up all the time so I think what I'll do now is I'm going to see if the app can pick up the magnetism on that screwdriver that we demagnetized so if it uh if it says that the screwdriver is still magnetized even though I know it's not because we just demagnetized it um then I'll know that that app just doesn't work very good for what we're trying to do so let me see what it says about the screwdriver okay so it looks like there's some inherent magnetism just in anything so the the the range on that doesn't seem like it's it's proper so like uh I checked the screwdriver and it still says the screwdriver is magnetized but we saw that it demagnetized um so I think just the the range is off so I think if something truly was magnetized it would be pegging the thing um and so we're we're checking things that just have a little bit of magnetism that basically you can't get rid of or at least this can't get rid of so I think I'll try another watch though just a random uh maybe just a movement outside of the the um the case and see if I can get a high reading and then lower it with this I'm just trying to figure out if this thing's even doing anything I mean I know it is because it you we saw it do it on the screwdriver but is it going to be useful for these watch movements okay so this one says like 59 whatever that is it's not strong enough to move like a a big movement and bounce it around we'll wait a few seconds and then well no let's just do it once because it said you should be able to do it one time okay so let me uh let me try and see what it is now after zapping at once well it did lower it but I mean it went from 59 to 32 I don't you know these numbers don't mean anything to me so I've got this one I think this is a Elgen look the crystals messed up um so I think we'll um we'll measure this one just to see if you get a difference in a in a actual watch and then uh we'll try zapping it so let's see what we get on the meter okay so that one was like 39 and it was going to 40 and a little bit above and then I zapped it and you you saw I got it down to like three or four so I guess I guess it's working better on a wrist watch than a pocket watch H let me try another pocket watch just a different one see if I can get a similar thing where I can get it down below 10 on this whatever scale this is okay so the highest I can get that to read is 280 whatever it was um if I move it around on the phone till it's on the sensor um so we'll try zapping this sucker this is an Old West clocks and keep in mind too it's in a metal case you know and it's just cheap metal that one actually moved a little bit all right so let's see if we're any better than uh what our reading was well you saw what I saw if I moved it around I could get it to go up as high as like 600 so I don't I have no faith in this app so I'm going to try downloading another app and see if we get you know good old technology to work and it could be that app's fine but not on my phone maybe it needs a a special type or something so let me see if I can find something else to do it with all right so I Googled it there used to be an app called lepsi that was kind of like the go-to standard that everybody liked um but they discontinued that and so now this one that we're using uh people swear by but the problem is I was putting the watch too close to it so I was and it says in the directions keep it about half an inch away from it so I was setting it on the the phone and that just makes it Go Haywire so if you hold it about half an inch above the phone and for all you millimeter people I don't know what to tell you I guess you can't use this app but for us Americans if you hold a half an inch away from the phone from the sensor you have to find the sensor on your phone if you hold a half inch away um it severely lowers all of the numbers so um like if I check the screwdriver it's down at like six um and so it's giving me much better so with that in mind one more time I'm going to try this one one more time um but here we go okay so it was at 100 I move it around that was the highest I could get it was 100 if I'm keeping it about half an inch above the the sensor and then uh I zapped it one more time and then I was the highest I could get it was about 10 so I think it is actually working um so that's all I got for that so if anybody out there can tell why my light isn't lighting up or what the light is supposed to even do I wonder if it's like dimly lit up and we just can't see it no it's not doing anything so if anybody knows how that's supposed to work maybe you can analyze the the circuit that took apart there let me know I'd love to have that part working however it's supposed to um but if not we'll just leaving how it is so there you go folks I hope you enjoyed it this is a magnaflux instantaneous demagnetizer it's amateur repair time we really didn't repair anything I don't think we I don't think anything got fixed this might have got fixed a little better so leave your comments below let us know what you think and I will see you on the next video and by the way if you like any of this watch stuff check out this video see you on the next one