Nikon MD-12 Overheating?

<p>so i was shooting a friend’s wedding this weekend and just brought one body, many lenses motordrive and a p&s. the body was my trusty nikon fm and the motordrive one of my three not so trusty md-12’s. <br /><br />i tend to have random intermittent problems with every md-12 that’s passed through my hands but when they’re working i love them enough to put up with this. but this case was somewhat scary!<br /><br />i fired off maybe 4 or 5 shots with the drive connected then it just became unresponsive. i pressed the release and no red light lit and no shutter tripped or advancement. as if there were no batteries in it. i disconnected it, fiddled with the actuator or transmission that connects at the bottom of the camera body, fingered the electrical contacts on both drive and body and remounted it. this is my normal procedure for malfunction and it always works. this tyme it didn’t work. so i said screw the drive for a while. at the reception, i mounted the drive again and it worked. i fired off 4 or 5 shots then the side of the drive where the batteries slide in (nothing inside this part of the drive but the battery terminal) got extremely hot and the drive stopped working again.<br /><br />weird.<br /><br />i was half afraid the batteries were going to explode or something! <br /><br />any ideas?<br /><br />once i have an income again, i’m going to get all three drives serviced. but in the meantym</p>

<p>Dirty battery contacts?</p>

<p>i think i cleaned them well when i first got the drive last year but good idea to check!</p>

<p>Yeah it def sounds like a loose connection somewhere. Loose and intermittent connections get very hot because of the resistence.</p>

<p>i would suspect short circuit. Dirty contacts need a lot of current to generate such a heat, 4 or 5 exposures probably can't give enough of it? </p>