Kodak EK6 Instax adapter and replacement gears for EK6

like Sir Issac Newton's quote, "if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." In my case, the giants are policecaprice/ @PeterAntal_1793832 who made the gear .stl files, and Josh Gladstone, who made the initial Instax film adapters for non-motorized Kodak cameras.

( original gear files: https://www.printables.com/model/836581-gears-and-broken-parts-for-kodak-instant-cameras/files#preview.file.QWliF )

I modified the holder and the picker for EK6 camera, after several iterations, I got it to work reliably. It is worth noting Mr. Gladstone advises against trying to adapt the motorized Kodak cameras, and I don't disagree. It is possible that the motor will try and do something that can't be done because something is jammed, and may break something in the transport mechanism in your camera. I have done limited testing, and have not had issues, but your case may be different. But considering these cameras are bricked anyway if you can't get it to take instax film, perhaps that is not so much a loss.

A note on the gears for the EK6. These are almost at the point of resolution of, say a Prusa MK2S, which I am using. I had to fool around with the slicing settings as well as size to get them to work. I ended up printing them at 102% size, as well as "perimeter generator" had to be set at "Classic" which is not the default setting, to get them to print so they worked for me in Prusa Slicer. replacing the gears is relatively simple, once you get the camera open. Inside the film door on the bottom are two screws. also, yjere are two screws under the top front camera fascia. take a small screwdriver or similar item and pry it apart from top middle. after that you will have screws visible that will allow you to remove the back, so you can access the side gears. For whatever reason it appears that only the top two OEM compound gears seem to disintegrate after 40+ years, so these are the only ones that need replacement.

The mask I made is meant to drop in in the front of the sighting window. You likely will need a bit of rubber or contact cement on the edges to guaranty that it won't fall out. It suffers from some parallax error, so it is not precise, but reminds you not to give as much headroom and that cropping of the sides. Open end should be on the bottom.

Also, a note on exposure: the original Kodak film for these cameras was 160ASA/ISO. Instax film is 800ASA/ISO, a little over two stops faster. So for proper exposure, you have to slide the exposure adjustment slider on the front of the camera all the way to the furthest "Darken" position, correcting for two stops, resulting in exposure of 1/3 over proper exposure. Short of re-engineering the internal exposure meter in the camera, or putting an ND filter in front of the lens, this is will be the most expedient way to get close to proper exposure. You effectively can expose properly (all the way to "Darken" dot with blue background), or have the baility to adjust up to 4 stops overexposed as you move it to the right, rather than an adjustment of +-2 stops, from middle position, as it was originally designed.