Metz Meca blitz 45 Twin Flash Info/Manual and Battery

[ben_hutcherson]

I've just picked up something that's more a curiosity than anything, but I'd still love to give it a try and see how it works.

Basically this is what, as best as I can tell, was one of the first portable flashes Metz made. It's called the Meca Blitz(yes two words, unlike later stuff) 45 Twin Flash. Other kits I've seen have two separate strobes(hence twin flash) but I only have one. The one I have looks not unlike a shoe-mount flash bulb flash with a bare flash tube backed by a big reflector.

This all ties into a case that looks not unlike a ladies handbag from the 50s. It's a shiny black plastic(bakelite?) case that hinges open. Opening it up shows a couple of huge flash capacitors-bigger than what's in something like a 60CT4 case-and honestly not much else. There is an empty area with some rubber padding and a pair of spade-terminated wires that presumably would hold a battery. There's also a standard US two prong 120V cord curled up in there(there is a place inside the box to set for 120V or 240V).

I'd really like to at least see this work. I don't know how much I'd use it, but it seems like it would be right at home on something like a Nikon F or especially my Hassy 500C(the latter of which I do use all the time, although usually with studio lights if I'm doing flash at all or occasionally a 60CT4). I can't find a manual or really even a lot of discussion on this online-there's another just like it on Ebay now(although the one up now has a second strobe head) but other than that everything I find references the older 45CT series handle mount flashes.

I did a bit of playing with it a little while ago. I have no idea what the specs would be on the battery, and if it's rechargeable-I'm not sure if the plug is meant to recharge a battery or actually power the unit. When I plug it in, I get no signs of life-hoping I'd get some idea of a battery, I did put a voltmeter across the two spade leads and didn't measure anything.

I got a bit brave and hooked a bench PSU up to the two spade leads. As I turned up the voltage, with the on switch on, I started getting a ferocious buzzing. At 6V-I figured a reasonable guess for voltage since that's what the SLA/gel cells for later Metz flashes are-it will pull around 7A. I watched it for a minute hoping I'd see current drop as the capacitors charged, and it seemed to a bit but I guess I got a bit scared. That seemed a lot of current to pump through an old piece of electrical equipment I don't totally understand.

Has anyone encountered/used one of these? If you have, do you at least know the battery voltage? If I could find a manual it would be really wonderful. Butkus has a manual for the "Babyblitz", which seems to use a similar flash head to the one I have, but with a smaller/less powerful pack that seems different enough to not make me want to try and carry the information over. This flash specifies the use of two "90V Microdyne Anodes", which I'm guessing may be small 90V radio batteries but at the same time I feel like I've seen 90V batteries in old camera flashes before. If it truly needs 90V, that might need some creativity. I've run old battery radios with 10x 9V batteries in series, which works great for that and lasts a long time, but that's also in a low current application. A lot of old radio batteries were dual voltage-6V/9V and 90V, with the 9V for the tube filaments and they can really suck power(I would often use C or D cells for that). I can't imagine a 90V radio battery lasting long in a flash....

Edited August 9, 2023 by ben_hutcherson

[kmac]

If yours is a 45 CT4, then it's the same as what I have and I've set mine up to take six AA non-rechargeable batteries which need an after market, or third party holder. The voltage is 9V, but rechargeable batteries would be something less that that.

[ben_hutcherson]

5 hours ago, kmac said:

If yours is a 45 CT4, then it's the same as what I have and I've set mine up to take six AA non-rechargeable batteries which need an after market, or third party holder. The voltage is 9V, but rechargeable batteries would be something less that that.

 

As I stated, this is nothing at all like a 45CT4...

 

 

[Jochen_S]

Your "45" is a dumb 60, because it was made so early, that it felt normal to name it after its guide number for, back then default, ISO 50 film. 

I picked one up too. The isolation around cables on mine was scarily brittle, so I never used it. 

Battery might have been even a 6V 4Ah lead acid. With the "60"s Metz introduced 6V 4Ah Dryfits & 5 sub-C NiCd packs. 

I used to run my 60 CT4 + a 45 at 7V from a beefy HAM radio PSU. Charging current was pretty high to start with but dropped after a while, shorter than that minute you quoted. 

Sorry, I am no way "electrician" enough to understand how your unit should be working / behaving &/ what exactly might be wrong with it. Is @rodeo_joe still around & able to jump in? 

My advice from the gutt: "This is a display only item. (& scarily dangerous to use)" But maybe you bought a miracle.

[ben_hutcherson]

1 hour ago, Jochen_S said:

Your "45" is a dumb 60, because it was made so early, that it felt normal to name it after its guide number for, back then default, ISO 50 film. 

I picked one up too. The isolation around cables on mine was scarily brittle, so I never used it. 

Battery might have been even a 6V 4Ah lead acid. With the "60"s Metz introduced 6V 4Ah Dryfits & 5 sub-C NiCd packs. 

I used to run my 60 CT4 + a 45 at 7V from a beefy HAM radio PSU. Charging current was pretty high to start with but dropped after a while, shorter than that minute you quoted. 

Sorry, I am no way "electrician" enough to understand how your unit should be working / behaving &/ what exactly might be wrong with it. Is @rodeo_joe still around & able to jump in? 

My advice from the gutt: "This is a display only item. (& scarily dangerous to use)" But maybe you bought a miracle.

Thanks for the info. Joe is one of the people I had in mind who would probably know about this or have some idea if anyone.

I was poking around a bit at it today and the buzzing comes from a vibrator although I can't really pick out the function of it. It's marked 4V, so I'm wondering if that's the operating voltage(or maybe a 6V battery).  Both the capacitors definitely hold charge-I didn't go out of my way to find that out but I think I can still feel it from one of them.

It does look good stuck on a Nikon F. If nothing else it can go next to one with a "fan" flashbulb reflector mount, but it would still be interesting to see it working.

 

[BeBu Lamar]

I believe the vibrator is to create AC from DC in order to step up the voltage. Newer flashes of course use solid state inverter. 

[ben_hutcherson]

Just to report back a bit on this-I actually have it working pretty much fully.

First of all, yes the vibrator buzzing is a bit disconcerting but I suppose it's just doing its job. Also, the flash gun looks like it should have a "ready" light behind the test button(it's clear plastic) but either it isn't working or the capacitors just aren't charging as much as they're supposed to.

On 6V, the current starts off at 7A but levels off to 4A, which sounds to me like capacitors charging. I'm wondering it these just are very leaky and could possibly benefit from reforming(that's a different discussion and topic for a different day). Once I see 4A on my bench PSU, pushing the test button on the flash gun will give a nice bright flash. Current will momentarily spike back up then level off, and it will give an equivalent flash.

Surprisingly enough, plugging it in to 120V worked fine also and would fire the flash gun with fast recharges.

I have a 6V lead acid gel cell that I bought thinking it could be made to work in the Metz 60 flashes. Unfortunately that one's a no-go-as best as I can tell Exide made the original Metz batteries and if they still make them I can no longer find them. This one was from a different manufacturer, was specified as a UPS battery, and has tabs rather than flat terminals. I could work with the different terminal type, but the Exide catalog says this should be the same size as the Metz battery(which for reference should be a Sonneschein A506/4.2K, and the tabbed version otherwise the same size is A506/4.2S). In any case, I had this one here and fully charged so went ahead and connected it. Sure enough, it worked fine and gave full recycle times of ~1 second. Of course there's not a chance this will fit inside the case, but I'm glad to see it work.

I'm wondering about powering it on 5x NiMH batteries, just as some will do inside old Metz dry fit cases for the 60 series flashes. 5 AA should just fit. Of course I have no idea how long they would last-probably not long.

[ben_hutcherson]

And...I think I can call it working as designed(more or less).

I put together a 5xAA 2400mAh battery that seems to power it just fine.

Of course charging will need to be by a bench PSU but shouldn't be too big of a deal. I'm not sure how many shots it will power, but I can't imagine that the original battery would have had this kind of capacity.

[BeBu Lamar]

I used 2 26700 LiFePO4 batteries rated at 6000mAh. Hold charge for a long time unlike the NiMH. 

[rodeo_joe1]

I'm still around. Thanks to medical science. 

A mechanical self-interrupter (vibrator) was a common way to get an 'A.C.' supply to drive a transformer back in the early days of electronic flash. Quite inefficient; since it takes power to drive the contact-breaker solenoid, and can only work at a fairly low frequency. It gets the job done though. 

However, you could try bypassing the vibrator and juicing the thing up from a Nikon or Canon (or 3rd party) external HV supply - an SD-8 or similar. They're only an inverter in a plastic box after all. The voltage from those is about 340 volts, which should be enough, and they should easily fit in the space of a 4v lead-acid battery and vibrator solenoid. 

Incidentally, do you know the value of the capacitors? Any total value less than 1400uF is going to be less powerful than a hotshoe speedlight. Especially with a low efficiency bowl reflector that's probably a bit tarnished, and with no Fresnel condenser lens. 

P. S. I admire your bravery in powering up that thing at all. I would have worn thick rubber gloves, goggles and ear-defenders before applying any voltage at all to an ancient bit of kit like that. 

[ben_hutcherson]

1 hour ago, rodeo_joe1 said:

I'm still around. Thanks to medical science. 

A mechanical self-interrupter (vibrator) was a common way to get an 'A.C.' supply to drive a transformer back in the early days of electronic flash. Quite inefficient; since it takes power to drive the contact-breaker solenoid, and can only work at a fairly low frequency. It gets the job done though. 

However, you could try bypassing the vibrator and juicing the thing up from a Nikon or Canon (or 3rd party) external HV supply - an SD-8 or similar. They're only an inverter in a plastic box after all. The voltage from those is about 340 volts, which should be enough, and they should easily fit in the space of a 4v lead-acid battery and vibrator solenoid. 

Incidentally, do you know the value of the capacitors? Any total value less than 1400uF is going to be less powerful than a hotshoe speedlight. Especially with a low efficiency bowl reflector that's probably a bit tarnished, and with no Fresnel condenser lens. 

P. S. I admire your bravery in powering up that thing at all. I would have worn thick rubber gloves, goggles and ear-defenders before applying any voltage at all to an ancient bit of kit like that. 

Thanks Joe and glad you're still with us!

I don't know the value of the caps in it but will look and check. I also suspect that after 50+ years they may have lost some of their original oomph and if I get really brave I may try reforming them.

I like your idea of bypassing the vibrator with an SD8 or equivalent.

I guess maybe powering it up at all was a bit reckless, but I go slow and watch the current on the bench PSU.

[rodeo_joe1]

On 8/17/2023 at 8:20 PM, ben_hutcherson said:

I also suspect that after 50+ years they may have lost some of their original oomph and if I get really brave I may try reforming them.

We'll, if you've charged them up enough to give a flash, then the job of re-forming is pretty much already done. 

You need to monitor the self-discharge leakage of the capacitor(s) to see how well any re-forming procedure is going. A quick'n'dirty way to do that is to see how long the ready-light stays lit after the charging circuit is switched off. Your lack of a neon ready-light obviously precludes that. 

Another way is to - carefully! - connect a high-impedance voltmeter across the capacitor terminals and watch how quickly the voltage drops after switching off the inverter. Good capacitors should only drop maybe 10% of their voltage per minute. Bad 'uns will drop to 90% in a matter of seconds. You will need to check there's no discharging 'safety' resistor wired across the capacitor though. 

I've only encountered a flash that stubbornly refused to re-forming once. That was a Sunpak Auto-Zoom 3600 that initially extinguished its ready light within a few seconds of switching the power off. After about 4 hours of mains-adapter powering and intermittent firing, that increased to some tens of seconds. After another 24 hours of continuous mains-adapter charging it kept its ready light on for about half the time of other examples of the same flash. Not too bad, but not good either. So IME, once those capacitors start to get leaky you might as well give up on them or replace them. 

(A good source of replacement flash capacitors are old 'rummage bin' cheap-name flashes like Hanimex or Cobra. The cappies in those are usually only 600uF @ 350 volts, but they're quite small in size and about 1/4 the volume of anything made in the 1950s to 1960s. 3 or 4 wired in parallel would give you a very respectable amount of flash energy.) 

Edited August 19, 2023 by rodeo_joe1

[ben_hutcherson]

On 8/19/2023 at 1:18 PM, rodeo_joe1 said:

You need to monitor the self-discharge leakage of the capacitor(s) to see how well any re-forming procedure is going. A quick'n'dirty way to do that is to see how long the ready-light stays lit after the charging circuit is switched off. Your lack of a neon ready-light obviously precludes that. 

Another way is to - carefully! - connect a high-impedance voltmeter across the capacitor terminals and watch how quickly the voltage drops after switching off the inverter. Good capacitors should only drop maybe 10% of their voltage per minute. Bad 'uns will drop to 90% in a matter of seconds. You will need to check there's no discharging 'safety' resistor wired across the capacitor though. 

I finally had a chance to play with this one again last night, and here's what I found:

First of all, not sure I mentioned this but there is a switch that controls the power output. I hadn't really looked too closely at it, but I had it set to the lower power setting("22") and was getting no voltage off the capacitor I was trying to read. Finally it hit me that what the switch does is just switch one of the two capacitors in and out of the circuit.

So, that out of the way, I checked the OTHER capacitor and it charged to ~560V and fell to around ~430V in a minute. With both capacitors in the circuit(switch flipped to the "45" high power setting) I saw it charge to ~515V and it would drop to ~390V after a minute.

At the end of the minute, I could still fire the flash, although obviously not as bright as when fully charged(I should get out my flash meter...).

After firing, with the power switched off, the capacitors will sit around 100V. They seem to want to stay here for a good little while. I waited 10 minutes and then finally used a 1KΩ resistor to discharge them. I didn't monitor voltage drop longer than a minute without firing the flash, which might be good information.

I know that this is around a 25% drop in 1 minute, which of course is a lot higher than 10%, but it's also not at the extreme of 90% in a few seconds.

Of note too-when I connect it to 120V, the caps will only charge to ~440V or so. I'll add that with the caveat that I didn't think to measure actual line voltage,  which who knows between the amount of stuff I'm running off a single 15A circuit in my office and the overall grid stress now with overnight temperatures over 90ºF(32ºC). I took the dog out last night around 1:00AM, and felt like I was walking into a sauna with the heat index still over 100ºF...

And yes I know all said and done that this isn't practical, but to me it's still interesting and fun to have it working. Once I find my other box of flash bits and bobs that should have a Safe Sync in it, I'll try it on one of my DSLRs with the 45mm f/2.8 GN

[rodeo_joe1]

4 hours ago, ben_hutcherson said:

... it charged to ~560V and fell to around ~430V in a minute. With both capacitors in the circuit(switch flipped to the "45" high power setting) I saw it charge to ~515V and it would drop to ~390V after a minute.

Wow! That's a high voltage, even for early 'electronic' flash, when H&S had a very low priority and flash tube technology was in its infancy. 

Many portable flashes of that era worked at just below 450 volts, which is/was a common maximum voltage for electrolytic capacitors. Hence the 440 volts delivered when it's mains powered. 

You might well be over driving the thing on 6 volts. That 4v marking probably means what it says. The fact that the peak voltage drops when both capacitors are in parallel could mean that the dielectric in one or both of them is breaking down and limiting the voltage.

If that's the case then the leakage current will naturally be higher than it should. You're also lucky that there hasn't been a loud bang followed by a shower of capacitor foil confetti! 

Is there no uF value and working voltage marked on the capacitor casings? 

[ben_hutcherson]

32 minutes ago, rodeo_joe1 said:

Wow! That's a high voltage, even for early 'electronic' flash, when H&S had a very low priority and flash tube technology was in its infancy. 

Many portable flashes of that era worked at just below 450 volts, which is/was a common maximum voltage for electrolytic capacitors. Hence the 440 volts delivered when it's mains powered. 

You might well be over driving the thing on 6 volts. That 4v marking probably means what it says. The fact that the peak voltage drops when both capacitors are in parallel could mean that the dielectric in one or both of them is breaking down and limiting the voltage.

If that's the case then the leakage current will naturally be higher than it should. You're also lucky that there hasn't been a loud bang followed by a shower of capacitor foil confetti! 

Is there no uF value and working voltage marked on the capacitor casings? 

Ouch! Thanks...I'll try it on 4V from a bench PSU and see what happens

Of course now I'm struggling to come up with a source for 4V. The best I can think of is maybe a pair of Cyclon cells, although those are pricey. If it will work on 3x NiMH I might call that good enough

As for the caps, this is what I have