Saturday, May 9, 2015

Manfrotto Magic Arm 244 Disassembled

My Manfrotto Magic Arm 244N stopped working a few months back.  One of the ends would refuse to loosen when you loosened the knob. After two attempts, one of which involved taking the entire thing apart, I was able to fix it.  I had over-tightened the knob causing one of the 2 sections inside the arm to slide and push a hole right through the washer.

Here is the arm completely disassembled laid out in order of how it would be reassembled.

Here is the washer that I pushed a new hole through. The smaller piece was wedged inside one of the two arm sections as you can see in the first photo.


Here it is reassembled with out the small hole piece. I might try to get Manfrotto to send me a new orange washer.

The metal piece that sits inside the knuckle has a indentation in it to hold the ball bearing. When you tighten the arm, you cause the bearing to move up out of the indentation putting pressure on the long pin and the piece at the end which puts pressure on the ball.  If the part in the nuckle doesn't go back out, then the arm will fail to work as it had for me.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks ! hard to find, only useful information available

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  2. Here are the instructions Shawn Cullen sent me

    "The problem you are having is that
    there is a ball bearing inside the magic arm that
    has locked up the cylinder that moves up and
    down the arm to put friction on the ball joint at
    the top to lock it in place.

    So here is what you will need to do. You will
    need 2 crescent wrenches. You need to loosen
    the very thin nut that is right below the black
    cap that holds the ball joint in place. Use the
    other wrench to clamp onto the other small nut
    below it, or just above your label on the arm.
    Once you loosen this thin nut, start to unscrew
    the black cap. Remember how many times you
    turn it. You will need to tighten it the same
    number of turns. I would go at least 5 to 6
    turns. Once you have done this, then unscrew
    the black handle and pull off the two arms.
    There is a short thick cylinder in the elbow joint,
    and this is where the ball bearing sits. It is
    supposed to sit in a grove on the thick black
    cylinder. So it needs to be reset back into this
    grove. So pull out the cylinder and find the ball
    bearing, put it into place on the cylinder and
    reinsert back into the elbow joint, but make sure
    the ball bearing is facing straight up at the arm.
    Once it is in place, then tighten up the thin nut
    and black cap. This should keep the ball bearing
    in place."

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  3. Indeed. I actually replaced the orange washer in mine with a piece of rubber. So far it seems to work a bit better and hasn't slipped through again. It was slipping through quite a bit prior to the swap out.

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  4. This is very helpful. Thank you. I just got mine and it came no paper work, no instructions. I did not realize the one big knob locked all three joints. My new 4K camera has some weight to it and the arm wanted to keep sagging. The pictures you shared made it clear how it all works. Very impressive.

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