Film coating machine (homemade) on Flickr

[Photo Engineer]

I think that one of the moderators should make this a sticky!

PE

 

[Dark Orange]

, I would park my car in the driveway and put this in the garage just to have one.

Funny you should mention that...

The filminator was dragged to a corner of the garage and walls built around it. It's there to stay. And the car is outside...

BTW, the term "Filminator" is of my own doing. All my photo titles are instant thoughts, and when first posting this I had a flashback to the Futurama episode with the "Crushinator".

I am glad this has shown you all what is possible to do in your own garage with a little knowledge and a lot of time. I hope this acts as a catalyst to your own creativity.

While this project was started with the aim of creating a coating machine with the best possible output with the most reliable consistancy between batches, it is probably overkill for the average user in here. Maybe Photo Engineer can suggest ways that the unit can be shrunk and simplified while still giving more consistant results than hand coating.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Actually, I cannot help shrinking it. All I keep thinking about is how to expand it to allow 8" coating.

Also, I have lots of emulsion formulas in mind that might work well on this machine. I'm thinking right now about this nice 400 - 800 speed emulsion....... Oh well.

PE

 

[rmazzullo]

I am blown away by the realization that a coating machine such as this has been built and can be made by others. Just the small details revealed in the photos and discussed have answered some questions before they were asked. Things like the Zenith pump (http://www.zenithpumps.com/products/bpb.htm), and the inline filters and traps, for starters. If you go to the larger original sizes of the photographs on Flickr, you can see some of the paths the film base takes through the machine. I am sure as more details emerge and are discussed, this will open up new possibilities that were only talked about not too long ago.

I am itching to see photos of the emulsion preparation equipment and reaction vessels.

Can you imagine a bunch (a whole bunch?) of these machines being built, and configured for film and / or paper? Even attempting color film? How about IR film, or experiments to recreate Tech Pan? The list seems almost endless.

I have located a source of bulk triacetate 120 (and other sizes) film base in NYC, but they have yet to get back to me as far as their minimum order requirements.

I wonder if you can use the same machine to coat and prepare roll film backing paper? The patents describe in good detail how the backing paper was made, and the what and why of the coated layers.

Bob M.

 

[ben-s]

...I'm thinking right now about this nice 400 - 800 speed emulsion....... Oh well....

Damnit, PE, did you have to say that

In theory, an 8" machine wouldn't have to be any longer, just a few inches wider... Or would the dryer would need to have a longer path to cope with a greater wet surface area?

I've been thinking more along the lines of a small (as in benchtop) 35mm slitting/perfing machine...

 

[Photo Engineer]

Ben;

Dryer capacity at 5" width is not sufficient to handle 10" width. You either have to run at about 1/2 speed or make the dryer cabinets longer.

PE

 

[Neanderman]

I wonder if you can use the same machine to coat and prepare roll film backing paper? The patents describe in good detail how the backing paper was made, and the what and why of the coated layers.

Bob:

Do you have these patent numbers? I'd be very curious to read them.

Ed

 

[rmazzullo]

Bob:

Do you have these patent numbers? I'd be very curious to read them.

Ed

Hi Ed...

Here you go. The inventor on all of them is Ernest L. Baxter, and the assignee is Eastman Kodak. The latest patent builds on the prior ones, so I have listed all of the numbers I found:

2751309, 2646366, 2646365, 2262986, and RE21268

Bob M.

P.S. When you see the term "transparent zein" mentioned in the patents, some further research seems to indicate that it is another name for confectioner's glaze, of all things. This needs further checking.

 

[rmazzullo]

Something else that comes to mind regarding the film coating machine: that it should be possible to scale this concept down to coat 35mm film base...providing a source is available. You could (potentially) use 35mm film projector sprockets and rollers for film transport.

Just a thought.

Bob M.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Something else that comes to mind regarding the film coating machine: that it should be possible to scale this concept down to coat 35mm film base...providing a source is available. You could (potentially) use 35mm film projector sprockets and rollers for film transport.

Just a thought.

Bob M.

Since coated width must be narrower than the support for technical reasons, and the edges are defective, this method would either be extremely messy causing loads of defects, or produce a product that is underwidth.

It is better to coat wider and cut down. This has been the experience of ALL manufacturers to date.

PE

 

[rmazzullo]

Since coated width must be narrower than the support for technical reasons, and the edges are defective, this method would either be extremely messy causing loads of defects, or produce a product that is underwidth.

It is better to coat wider and cut down. This has been the experience of ALL manufacturers to date.

PE

Dang. Thought I could get around slitting and perforating the film after the run.

 

[okto]

Wow. I can scarcely contain my excitement about this, being someone who got into film after it was essentially obsolete. One of my greatest personal worries is being stuck in a world in which 35mm film is no longer produced.

I'd love to see the plans/information on this machine be made available for the community; I wonder if our unnamed wonder chemist would be amenable...

 

[JBrunner]

If the fellow isn't already here, he should be invited.

 

[Neanderman]

It is better to coat wider and cut down. This has been the experience of ALL manufacturers to date.

I would think, too, that coating pre-perfed film could lead to all kinds of issues of un-evenness.

Ed

 

[rmazzullo]

Perhaps one of the drive rollers towards the end of the run can be a sprocket punch / film slitter. What needs to be determined is if it would be a rotary punch, or something intermittent, perhaps driven by a geneva mechanism, or rotary cam, or something along those lines.

Timing it would be 'fun'.

Bob M.

 

[ben-s]

Perhaps one of the drive rollers towards the end of the run can be a sprocket punch / film slitter. What needs to be determined is if it would be a rotary punch, or something intermittent, perhaps driven by a geneva mechanism, or rotary cam, or something along those lines.

Timing it would be 'fun'.

Bob M.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit, and came to the conclusion that it would be a bad idea to make slitting/chopping/perfing part of the coater's job.
It would limit you to making only one format on that particular machine.

If you coat a "master roll", and chop that up in another machine, you immediately have a coater that can produce many formats - which, given the low demand for film is quite useful.

 

[rmazzullo]

After thinking about your post, I have to agree with you. Separating the two tasks into 2 machines makes good sense, and reduces complexity quite a bit.

Thanks for the second look, Ben.

Bob M.

 

[okto]

What about flashing edge markings on? Engineering that would be even more 'fun' than the sprocket pucnh.

 

[ben-s]

What about flashing edge markings on? Engineering that would be even more 'fun' than the sprocket pucnh.

Oddly enough, I think that would be pretty simple.
A line of LEDs shooting into small fibre optics arraged into a line could be driven by a PIC to print text in a similar manner to "POV toys"
http://www.ladyada.net/make/minipov2/index.html

These things work on persistence of vision, and basically flash out a message on one line of LEDs. As you swish them through the air, their message appears, courtesy of the persistence in your eye.

The same trick would work with film. If you really wanted to be complex, you could hook the clock input of the PIC to the speed of the film - I doubt this would be necessary though...

 

[ben-s]

hopefully the attached files will make it a bit clearer...

Pic driving LEDs:

Fibre optic head over the edge of the film:

The LEDs flash like this:

 

[Dark Orange]

Very nice, but you have to build the machine first.

This talk of PICs brings up the subject of automation.

Currently, the machine is all manual. If you adjust the web speed, you have to adjust the emulsion volume as well. On paper, linking the two to allow the user to dial in an emulsion thickness and a coating speed is a simple. In reality, the system needs to be designed with that goal in mind.

I dabble in automation systems as part of my job and I have the basic hardware needed to do the job. In this case, a Unitronics M90 or twowith the option of upgrading to a Unitronics Vision 120. The benefit of these units is that they are a type of PLC (Process Logic Controller) that have key input and a display screen. Unlike the more chunky and complex Rockwell and Allen Bradley hardware you may pick up for a carton of beer, the software to program them is downloadable from the net, and is free rather than costing an arm and a leg.

However, while the 'brain' of the system is easy to get and to program, you need drive controllers that can talk modbus or similar, (Not gunna happen on this version of the hardware unfortunately) and preferrably some type of feedback system - emulsion rate just requires some fancy (read: expensive) meters unless you happen to use positive displacement pumps such as the Zenith, in which case RPM feedback (in the form of a mag sensor on the pump drive shaft will do. Same method for web feed speed.

Apart from that, automation should be easy. With only a few engineering tweeks you should be able to thread the machine, connect the emulsion hopper, punch in the web speed and emulsion thickness required, and stand back.

The system will turn off the lights, prime the emulsion pump up to the coating head, start the chillers and when the correct temperatures have been reached, it then starts the drive and when the correct speed has been reached and the splice comes past, wind the coating head into the base for a complete revolution then back it off and shut the system down.

The system can then optionally prime another emulsion and do a second (or third) layer.

The user then has to just cut and discharge the finished product before turning the lights back on.

This field is, unfortunately, an area the builder is not familiar with and as he is quite comfortable having total manual control over everything, I am not sure it is an area he has any desire to explore.

 

[rmazzullo]

I have located a source of bulk triacetate 120 (and other sizes) film base in NYC, but they have yet to get back to me as far as their minimum order requirements.

Bob M.

I received a message today from the actual sales rep from the company that makes triacetate film base. They only make the triacetate in 'master roll' sizes -- about 45 inches wide, by 1,850 meters long, by 4.6 mils. I would have to buy 6 master rolls so that comes out to about 6.6 miles. I was under the impression from the initial contact that they sold cut sizes of triacetate. Not so. This is probably more film base than we could use in two lifetimes on such a small scale.

They did suggest other places to look, so I have some more work to do on Monday.

Dark orange, do you know where the machine builder got his base material from?

Thanks,

Bob M.

 

[Hologram]

They did suggest other places to look, so I have some more work to do on Monday.

www.filmotec.de might be a place to look at...

 

[Photo Engineer]

Bob;

Purchase involves getting up to 8 42" rolls of film or paper with each roll being up to 1000 ft long or more. I've been 'round the bush. Do we keep having to do this until the manufacturers quit talking to us?

Volume sales are the norm and these sales are huge. The contrrol of the machine is critical and difficult. How many times do I have to tell you that it takes people who know what they are doing to buy materials and run these machines.

PE

 

[AgX]

Exposing edge markings by means of an LED/fibre matrix:

ben-s,

That's the way the industry does it.
At least Agfa (with a homebuilt unit enabling exposing K-code too), and Filmotec, who bought one such machine from them.