Cleaning Nova Processor?????????? Help!

The fix compartment of my Novaquad has become tainted with a black stubborn deposite. Do you know of any household methods to remove it? I know about the Nova Tar buster, but that will take a week to ship here and I would like toget printing again this weekend.

Thanks Jaap Jan

Have you tried using a long handled bottle brush or a dowel rod with a cut piece of sponge on the end?

Try filling it with a strong concetration of household bleach and water..perhaps 1 part bleach to 5 parts water and allowing it to sit for a couple of hours. Then empty and rinse it out completely since bleach does a good job of killing fixer.

It may be a big help. But then again....

jeroldharter said:

Have you tried using a long handled bottle brush or a dowel rod with a cut piece of sponge on the end?

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I have a NovaQuad and to date I have always managed to clean it with a bottle brush and a little washing up liquid and my fixer slot has been pretty black sometimes. Just a word of warning at the risk of insulting your intelligence as you may already do this but I'd empty the slot immediately before the fixer. In theory if your careful it should be possible to avoid any washing up liquid soap suds spilling over but in practice.....

I usually take the opportunity to drain all the slots, clean and then re-fill with dev, stop and fixer. On the replenishment system the chemicals in each slot are always fresh and re-usable.

Maybe hold off on the bleach until straight washing fails.

Pentaxuser

naaldvoerder said:

The fix compartment of my Novaquad has become tainted with a black stubborn deposite. Do you know of any household methods to remove it? I know about the Nova Tar buster, but that will take a week to ship here and I would like toget printing again this weekend.

Thanks Jaap Jan

Click to expand...

When I got mine used, it was pretty bad. I filled it up with warm H20 and lots of that denture cleaner stuff. Let that sit for a day. Drain, repeat. Then another day in bleach+h20. I had to get a long brush. It was called the "under the fridge" brush. Looks like a bottle brush. Its pretty clean now.

Wasn't there a thread about cleaning sans bleach by using fixer per se recently? Not totally exhausted fixer, but it doesn't have to be fresh either. Moreover, isn't bleach a clear, known taboo for acrylics/plastics as in Jobo reels for it makes them brittle?

I used the cleaner sold by Nova called 'Tar Buster'. It turned a really stained processor into something almost new. It is not cheap but it lasts a long time.

I'm not sure if it is available where you live?

Barry
UK

Mr Muscle oven cleaner works for me.

BarryWilkinson said:

I used the cleaner sold by Nova called 'Tar Buster'. It turned a really stained processor into something almost new. It is not cheap but it lasts a long time.

I'm not sure if it is available where you live?

Barry
UK

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I have often wondered about Tar Buster myself. Not for the Nova Quad as I have found washing up liquid to do the job as I have said. However I do have a problem with an Ampro white fibreglass sink which is slowly getting stained.

It may be that the Nova Quad material and fibreglass sink are not that much different. Have you had any experience of using it on a fibreglass sink?

I probably ought to ask Nova as it sell the sinks as well but any light you shed on this would be helpful.Thanks

Pentaxuser

hey

i guess it are silverdeposids ,use deluted HCL ,a 2-3%solution ,stay overnight rinse well and it is clean

jm

pentaxuser said:

It may be that the Nova Quad material and fibreglass sink are not that much different. Have you had any experience of using it on a fibreglass sink?

Pentaxuser

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I have not tried Tarbuster on anything other than the Nova. I don't have a darkroom sink at the moment -((.

I guess a call to Nova seems best.


Barry

Amaloco H16 Laboclean will help to fix your problem. Other receptures based on HCl or H2SO4 or chromic acid are much to dangerous in use without enough chemical experiences.

Tabs for cleaning teeths, will also help.

Best regards,

Robert

My tar busting brew:
- 1 part glacial acetic acid (> 60% as provided as stopbath concentrate)
- 1 part "pure" Isopropanol (> 90%)
- 1 part "pure" water

I spray this onto the surfaces, let sit and then wash away the disolved tar. If your Nova is very black as if it spent a milenia in a tar pits it'll take a few more goes...

For handling silver deposits probably the easiest solution is Farmer's reducer or some slighly more concentrated C-41 bleach.. one or the other (or both) should be found in most all darkrooms.

I have found that there is a "super" or "heavy duty" version of the denture cleaning tablets made by Steradent. This has worked very well for me (6 tablets in a 2 litre slot) in the developer slot of the Nova. Sometimes it's enough to use a percarbonate laundry soaker, sometimes called "oxygen bleach".

As has been mentioned, the black fixer stain is something else (probably metallic silver) , and is also probably different to the "tar" that is apparently formed by colour chemicals.

Hi

I,m probably a bit late posting this as I would assume that you would have already adopted another APUGers cleaning method, but it might be helpful to someone else.

This is something that I only did last week and it worked a treat.

I went to my local d.i.y store and purchased a 'VILEDA ULTRA MOP DRY' which is a slip on replacment head for polishing wooden floors.

I needed to make this more rigid and also it had to reach the bottom of the Nova Monochrome vertical processor that I own(16X12).

Fortunately, I had an old clip frame that had a plasic front instead of glass. With a stanley Knife, I cut this to the size of the mop head, but also added a handle to it, so is now rezembled a very thin, perspex cricket bat.

I then cut a slit in the back of the mop head, the width of the handle, and pushed the handle through the slit and slipped the mop head on to the perspex paddle. It now rezembled a slim, furry cricket bat.

I then stood the processor in the bath, put one scoop of 'OXI CLEAN' also available from any good d.i.y.store, in each slot and filled them with warm water, stired it and left it over night.

The rest was easy, I used my new 'Super Duper Furry Slot Processor cleaning Paddle'[copyright to me] gently easing it in to the first slot and cleaned one side, then turn it around and clean the other side, then repeat for each slot.

HEY PRESTO! One squeeky clean processor.

Just a word of warning though. The slots on the Nova Monochrome vertical slot processor all vary slightly in size, my developer slot being the narrowest. My new gadget is a tight sqeeze in it but it does still reach the bottom, but I was very gentle with it and the warm water made it just that little bit more flexible.

The mop head cleaned up nicely aswell, and dried to perfection in the airing cupboard.

I hope this helps someone.

Regards

Stoo Batchelor

I too use Oxy-Clean (or equivalent product) to purge my 16x20 Nova processor. If I've got a particularly heavy load of gunk in a slot, I'll even go for two scoops of Oxy-Clean. Put in as hot a water as you can get, and stir it with some kind of plexiglass rod to get the oxyclean dissolved that's on the bottom. Let it sit overnight, then flush the compartment several times over. I've switched it back and forth from b/w to color and back again, which requires especially rigorous cleaning. I'm now getting a Jobo rotary processor so I can avoid the switchover altogether.

Thank you for all your good advice.!