Beseler Head Enquiry

Dear Friends,

I'm sorry that this keyboard is giving erratic starts to these posts. I'm sure that it is not my fault, as I do not stutter. But to business....

My Beseler 45 DichroS enlarger head seems to be faulty - it has blown two enlarger bulbs in short succession.A preliminary measurement across the lamp socket shows a full 240V rather than the 82V one would expect. I hesitate to try more lamps until the technician has looked at it.

Have others had this same experience or is this just bad luck? The head was new about 3 years ago and up to now has functioned perfectly - about one globe every nine months.

Uncle Dick

Sounds like you power supply took a crap!!! Can you get parts down-under?

The power supply for my LPL recently died, and I've wired up a replacement using a household lighting dimmer to substitute until I can get it fixed. So far it's working well.
I bought one that has a switch and a separate slider for the dimming. I found the right setting by hooking it up to power and adjusting the slider until I measured 82 V. Then retested with a load equivalent to the enlarger bulb, before hooking it up on the enlarger. I plan to superglue the slider so that it can't be accidentally changed.
If you go this route, make sure you get a dimmer that can handle the bulb's wattage. I bought a relatively cheap one, but even so, it's rated for controlling up to 600 Watts.

I hope this helps,
Barry

Uncle Dick said:

Dear Friends,


Uncle Dick

Click to expand...

Uncle Dick? From Pure Silver? Is that you? (Taps monitor glass)

Hello?

Dear Nephew Roscoe,

Dear Nephew Roscoe,

Yes, this is Uncle Dick from the pure-silver list. Like the silverware, I am older, thinner, and more tarnished. Some of my tines have bent, and I no longer fit the carton I arrived in. I am, however, fully functional. Or will be when I get this wretched Beseler repaired. In the meantime I am printing RA4 with an old incandescent bulb and filters in the drawer....and the results are really rather good. If one were able to get filters in .02 increments I would be tempted not to return to the dichroic head - the incandescent is so quiet.

Uncle Dick

The power supply for my LPL recently died, and I've wired up a replacement using a household lighting dimmer to substitute until I can get it fixed. So far it's working well.
I bought one that has a switch and a separate slider for the dimming. I found the right setting by hooking it up to power and adjusting the slider until I measured 82 V. Then retested with a load equivalent to the enlarger bulb, before hooking it up on the enlarger. I plan to superglue the slider so that it can't be accidentally changed.
If you go this route, make sure you get a dimmer that can handle the bulb's wattage. I bought a relatively cheap one, but even so, it's rated for controlling up to 600 Watts.

Click to expand...

I have the same model, since it kicked the bucket I rewired the MR 16 sockets and use 120v 250w lamps. You can use bulbs of the voltage as your country. The wattage and color temp. are the same as the 82v bulbs. I'm not using any of the faulty circuit board and have removed them entirely. I also wired the fan with a separate cord. I run it off of a Sola CV, constant voltage unit that provides clean accurate voltage, no dips or spikes.

I also gutted a Beseler Universal 45 head, taking the bulb holders and filters out with the wiring harness. I'm going to use them in a new head with a round light tube the same as the Beseler but sized for an 8x10. Lined with styrofoam and designed exactly like the Beseler. I will be putting it in a square case and add an external blower to cool it. The Universal has three bulbs of 250 watts but required a base controller that I never got so it's parts city for it. I plan to use it on my Durst 138, I have a 5x7 negative carrier and plan to make an 8x10 glassless carrier exactly like the Zipper model.

There are some nice electronic switches that can be used with a setup like this, slide or preset increments and temperature switches for fans also.

Curt

Venerable and Long Lost Uncle;
There's a thread here:
http://tinyurl.com/5hmyns
where one "Andy" pops in to say he repairs Beseler color heads. Before he showed up, I went through a very great deal of fooling around to get a DDS for a 23CII fixed (it wasn't actually broken; suffered from "lamp on intermittent variable delay"; it is broken now) and, in the process, my man with the soldering iron discovered that, even after we replaced the offending obsolete component, there was another obsolete component that would eventually fail.

I bought a Dual Dichro head (not S) off that auction site. It's older, has a seperate stabilized power supply, and is nearly 2 stops faster. If that power supply croaks, I can jury rig a replacement.

You could give Andy a try, though he's in the US, a bit far from you. Or see if you can find a Dual Dichro (not S, for internally Stabilized) head if they exist, IDK. Or find your own guy with a soldering iron to install a seperate lamp, which might bypass those conveniences like the WL lever cutoff switch.

Hope you have a better, and cheaper, time of it than I did.