Can anyone help me misuse a Kodak X-Omat 2000A Processor

[williaty]

I just received a Kodak X-omat 2000A Processor. It looks like a giant laser printer and you put exposed x-ray film in one and a few minutes later a developed, fixed, washed, and dried x-ray comes out the other end. I'd like to misuse this thing to process x-ray film for photographic purposes. I know that, processed as intended, x-ray film is way too high contrast. I've seen some great results on LFPF from x-ray film with reduced development to reduce the contrast and Dmax of the film into something usable for photographic images. As it stands, this appears to have a fixed time and temperature for the whole machine. The development time is quite short: the whole process takes just 157 seconds or 118 seconds (depending on which gear the processor is in) from dry film to dry negative but the temperature is quite high (33.3 or 34.3 C, depending on gear). I assume this implies they're using a high-activity developer to get the job done that fast. Would switching to a photographic developer like XTOL likely act in the correct direction to reduce contrast? Does anyone know of a way to abuse the control system to get it to either slow down or run colder (or both)?

Any tips you guys might have would be awesome as being able to machine process up to 14x17" x-ray film would be wonderful.

 

[John51]

If the motors are ac, then afaik, the gearing needs to be changed to alter the speed. (Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong on this.) With dc motors, you can change the speed by altering the dc voltage powering the motor.

The heaters should be easy to regulate. Break into one side of the heater power supply and fit an Inkbird digital thermostat. No need to remove the original thermostats as they'll be always on and won't make any difference.

 

[AgX]

With dc motors, you can change the speed by altering the dc voltage powering the motor.

It is not quite that simple, as reducing the voltage will also reduce the torque. An outcome would be solid-state-switched pulsed-current.