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Durst Laborator 1200 - is the chassis head specific?

Ghostman

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Dec 5, 2011
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Switzerland
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Hi everyone,

I have a Durst Laborator 1200 with an Ilford Multigrade 500 enlarger head. Behind the neck of the enlarger is a rather dangerous tensile plate spring of sorts. Today I saw a Durst 1200 Laborator chassis with a Durst Colour head unmounted. The chassis appears newer than mine with knobs in slightly different places and no flat spring on the back. It is very neat and new-looking.

My question is this: Are all Laborator 1200 chassis generic or are they enlarger head specific. Would I be able to mount my Multigrade 500 head on to this enlarger?

I will try and get more information about the enlarger chassis or pictures if anyone needs this to help me answer my question.

Many thanks in advance.
 
The chassis (as far as I am aware) are designed to accept a number of different heads. Although, if you read the manual, each head requires a different number of spacer plates to counterbalance the weight correctly - I have two different chassis and three heads (CLS450, CLS500, & condenser) that I swap and change as and when needed.

The MG500 head should have a substantial steel adaptor plate - As long as you keep this with the head, you shouldn't have any difficulty in swapping it over to another chassis or putting different head on.
 
Many thanks for the reply Paul. I bought my enlarger from secondhanddarkroom in the UK and can recall someone advising me to check on the base plate at the time. Do you know much about the different models and the spring mechanism that drives the head up and down the neck? Like I said, mine has a tensile metal spring that looks like it might break one day and new one I saw was covered and more modern looking.
 
I can only really comment on the equipment I have and use - What I can tell you about the spring is it damned strong and you do not want to get your fingers caught up in it (it hurts a lot !).

Should you need to change the head, either use a strap to hold the carriage down or raise it to the top of the column first.

FYI: I have a couple of manuals that I could email if you need them, just PM me your address.
 
 
I have learned my lesson when transporting my 1200. I too let it snap back up, I never lost any fingers but I did crack the chassis! This new model that I am looking at does not have the flat ribbon spring exposed. It appears to be housed. How does yours look?
 
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