A clarification on Kodak coating practice

Photo Engineer · Mar 16, 2010

IDK if this is the best place to put this post. It is intended to clarify some of Kodak's coating practices and place some products in better perspective.

I have said in the past in many posts that Kodak coats 42" wide with a 2" discardable edge (1" on each side of the web) in 5000 ft lengths. Well, I spent most of my time with paper coating for which this is true, but in film, I dealt with the Pilot lab which coated 21" wide film coatings.

However, the newest Kodak coating machine coats 54" wide and 6000 ft lengths. So, I have to stand kind of corrected. This increases the amount of film from a single master roll by quite a bit and also increases the cost of a master roll. Of course, paper coated in Colorado is coated over 70" wide.

So, with these corrections, you now have a more complete picture of the yields and costs.

Sorry about the ambiguity, but this was brought to my attention by an EK friend recently.

PE

eclarke · Mar 16, 2010

What's the coating time for a full master roll on the new machine?..Evan Clarke

Photo Engineer · Mar 16, 2010

Lets just say that it would be less than an hour.

PE

dpurdy · Mar 16, 2010

PE, I just finished reading Team Zebra. Were you part of TZ?
Dennis

Photo Engineer · Mar 16, 2010

Dennis;

I'm not sure what you mean. "Amazing Race"? If I don't get it right, then I must not have been a part of any Kodak team with that name. Our projects were letters and numbers such as P-130 and PL-979 and etc.... Or they had formal names such as Merlin or OASIS or something like that.

The Letter + Number combination were usually product development projects with the year often incorporated into the number. The word names were usually internal projects.

PE

Photo Engineer · Mar 16, 2010

Ok, my brain malfunctioned.

No, I was not part of this team. It was at an executive and plant (MFG) level and we never interacted with them in research. Sorry.

PE

eclarke · Mar 16, 2010

Photo Engineer said:
Lets just say that it would be less than an hour.

PE

So roughly 195,000 4x5 sheets coated in an hour. When people start talking about the demise of film they must consider the staggering capacity Kodak alone has and how must purchasing must be done to make film production viable...EC

Prest_400 · Mar 16, 2010

eclarke said:
So roughly 195,000 4x5 sheets coated in an hour. When people start talking about the demise of film they must consider the staggering capacity Kodak alone has and how must purchasing must be done to make film production viable...EC

Indeed, it's a lot. But I guess that the greatest part of all the film coated goes to motion picture.
I seen some "kodak interesting facts" on a blog of the company, one of the facts was this one:

Each year, Kodak sells enough color print film to circle the globe more than 90 times.

eclarke · Mar 16, 2010

Prest_400 said:
Indeed, it's a lot. But I guess that the greatest part of all the film coated goes to motion picture.
I seen some "kodak interesting facts" on a blog of the company, one of the facts was this one:

Yes, digital film making is the real threat to us analog still photographers...EC

samuraiwarrior2 · Mar 16, 2010

What is this paper coating you mentioned in Colorado? I live there and would be interested learning more about something that goes on near home.
Thanks
Thomas

Photo Engineer · Mar 16, 2010

Thomas;

Kodak has a plant outside Denver, but I have forgotten the name of the small town it is located in. It was sold to another company (ONYX) of Canada which has changed names. Kodak now leases coating time on the equipment.

PE

Photo Engineer · Mar 16, 2010

On the original topic, some thoughts have struck me based on the posts here.

Remember that the coating machines must stay threaded with "leader". So, to coat 6000 ft of film you need 3 6000 ft rolls. One is leader, one is coating and one is trailer to rethread the machine. At startup, leader is used to start the bead, and this leads to more than 6000 ft being coated, as you don't just flip a switch and start coating. The machines take a few minutes to get up to full speed. So, figure 7000 - 14000 ft of support needed to get 6000 ft of good stuff.

Then, all of the coating may not be perfect, so they plan on up to 10% waste due to defects depending on product. So, all in all, they may coat a lot more than they want. The hope is that they sell as much as is salable.

PE

Mick Fagan · Mar 16, 2010

PE, you last post on this subject is very interesting, I knew there was wastage, but didn't know just how much wastage was possible if things didn't go too well!

Mick.

jgjbowen · Mar 16, 2010

Thanks Ron.

Ray Rogers · Mar 16, 2010

Photo Engineer said:
...the coating machines must stay threaded with "leader". So, to coat 6000 ft of film you need 3 6000 ft rolls. One is leader, one is coating and one is trailer to rethread the machine. At startup, leader is used to start the bead, and this leads to more than 6000 ft being coated, as you don't just flip a switch and start coating. The machines take a few minutes to get up to full speed. So, figure 7000 - 14000 ft of support needed to get 6000 ft of good stuff.

PE

???

But you don't use fresh base for the full length of each run do you?
Arn't those leaders and trailers reused ?

Ray

mikebarger · Mar 16, 2010

Based on other threads, I bet Foma ends up with .00001% wastage from their master rolls.

Mike

Jim Edmond · Mar 16, 2010

Photo Engineer said:
Thomas;

Kodak has a plant outside Denver, but I have forgotten the name of the small town it is located in. It was sold to another company (ONYX) of Canada which has changed names. Kodak now leases coating time on the equipment.

PE

I believe it's in Windsor. The Canadians must have liked the name

Interesting thread - I've wondered how much waste occurred before things stabilized. How do they spot a small defect in so much area? It seems to be very effective, as I don't think I've ever had a defect in Kodak film.

Tim Gray · Mar 16, 2010

Jim Edmond said:
How do they spot a small defect in so much area? It seems to be very effective, as I don't think I've ever had a defect in Kodak film.

I thought PE mentioned some kind of IR scanning technology at one point.

Photo Engineer · Mar 16, 2010

Ok, here I go again.................

Kodak scans every square inch of product for defects and produces a defect map for the slitting and chopping operation so that bad areas can be bypassed!

Next, regarding the machines, they must be kept in a state of "threadedness" . The machines must remain threaded as the threading operation is tedious. Ok, Imagine a threaded machine starting up. It has to get to speed and then they start the bead, and at that point it may be on the 6000 ft leader or on the 6000 ft master roll. In any event, some finite quantity of coating is scrap as the bead forms. Then they have good coating.

The leader with bad coating CANNOT be reused. It is "different" than bare support. Then you go on to good coating.

So, you may get 6000 ft of good. Depends.

Now, the point in retrospect that I want those doubters to consider. "do I know enough about engineering or photo materials coating to even comment?"

The reason I state this is that I have seen people here questioning Simon Galley as well. Geez folks, give us a break. Ilford and Kodak know how to make the products you buy. It is not easy, and you are not "rewarding" the guys who make it very well when you bash anyone speaking in their favor. It is a difficult and time consuming process. It may take a month beforehand to produce the emulsion, support and all of the other items that go into a product for that 1 hour or less coating session. They have to make it right and on-schedule.

PE

Tim Gray · Mar 16, 2010

Photo Engineer said:
It may take a month beforehand to produce the emulsion, support and all of the other items that go into a product for that 1 hour or less coating session. They have to make it right and on-schedule.

Sounds like a rocket launch. Except you have to make money on it

I love hearing about this stuff and am glad you share it with us. Does Kodak do plant tours like Ilford does?

Photo Engineer · Mar 16, 2010

Tim;

They stopped plant tours about 15 years ago IIRC due to the expense. Sorry. They used to have a wonderful tour though, and a wonderful dining room for guests. That is all closed down now.

PE

Tim Gray · Mar 16, 2010

Photo Engineer said:
Tim;

They stopped plant tours about 15 years ago IIRC due to the expense. Sorry. They used to have a wonderful tour though, and a wonderful dining room for guests. That is all closed down now.

PE

Oh well. Would have been cool. I'm a lot closer to Rochester than I am to the UK.

Mahler_one · Mar 16, 2010

Ron: Yes, most of us probably take the wonderful quality control and products made by Ilford and Kodak very much for granted. Thanks very much for giving us a good insight into Kodak production, and "what it takes" to make quality film and paper.

Anon Ymous · Mar 17, 2010

eclarke said:
Prest_400 said:

Indeed, it's a lot. But I guess that the greatest part of all the film coated goes to motion picture.
I seen some "kodak interesting facts" on a blog of the company, one of the facts was this one:

Each year, Kodak sells enough color print film to circle the globe more than 90 times.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Yes, digital film making is the real threat to us analog still photographers...EC

Actually, it's not digital film making that threatens analog photography. It's the projection method. You see, motion picture print film is what is used in huge quantities.

DanielStone · Mar 18, 2010

watch this:

explains it pretty well. In Dutch(I think its dutch) though. subtitled.

[video=KODAK 1958 "How film is made" - PART 1/2]13[/video]

-Dan

A clarification on Kodak coating practice

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