First works on the coater have started

ADOX Fotoimpex

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We started working on the coater and web. After 10 years of sleep the Agfa technology was woken up and adopted. Later we will merge her with Ilford´s Swiss technololy.

The dry construction guys (actually a girl) finished the walls of the melting and coating control room. Once the dust has cleared we can continue on the web.

The coating table shown (with main drive, coating roller and measurement rollers) was responsible for millions of sqm´s of Agfa´s Precisa, Vista, Ultra, Scala and APX from 1994 until the end in 2004.

We reinstalled some passive web rollers to simulate the web travel in order to start calculating the new web-tension and torque for the new motors. The old DC motors will be replaced by new direct driven AC motors.

In the front is the swinging (!) coating roller. What a piece of luxury! Gap adjustment via a swinging roller against the cascade slide. Love it!

ADOX – We make film!

We can´t upload the other images to APUG due to image size restrictions.
See the full story here: http://www.adox.de/Photo/first-works-on-the-coater/

 

Sal Santamaura

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ADOX Fotoimpex said:
...We started working on the coater and web. After 10 years of sleep the Agfa technology was woken up and adopted. Later we will merge her with Ilford´s Swiss technololy...
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Mirko, it's always great to see the progress you're making. I'm extremely pleased you're so much younger than I am, as well as younger than the average age of those who've made chemical imaging products until now.

Please excuse my ignorance, but what does "merge with Ilford's Swiss technology" mean? Do you plan to move all or some of the Marly equipment to Bad Sarrow? If not, which functions are expected to be implemented in Germany and which ones in Switzerland? Thanks in advance for clarifying.
 

RauschenOderKorn

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Impressive!!!!

Yesterday, I had a look at a German darkroom manual from 1996, which lists all mayor German suppliers of that year. There was no Adox and no Fotoimpex mentioned, and today you are building this! Really impressive!
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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In Marly we are by now fully operational. We will start producing film soon. This took us almost 4 years and we are happy to have made this achievement.
What you see in the images here is the Agfa coating table with coating roller and main drive before the coating. What you cannot see by now is the actual coating die. This is because we have not mounted it and we do not plan to mount the original Agfa die. Instead we plan to mount one of our swiss coating dies. This is because we want to be able to transfer recipes from one machine to the other and consolidate on the technology. In the short term we will produce everything in Switzerland and use this machine for trial coatings only even though it is larger and more powerfull. The drier will not be completed just the actual coating, stiffing and some web to run a few meters of product and stop. In the long term we want to build a second fully functional machine which we manufacture in house and of which we know every nut and bolt (more importantly every bit and byte of the controlers). It is actually easier to this than to learn everything about the swiss machine. Apart from this producing paper is alreaday prohibitive in Switzerland because of the high costs and low capacity of the small machine.
We will do this with the first batches of Polywarmtone to get onto the market but we will loose money doing so.
So in the long term we need a more productive machine for this and here it is "evolving".
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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markjwyatt said:
Single layer slot die?
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Cascade slide. Not mounted yet. The rust in the front was inbetween the coating table and the arms carrying the die. Agfa never took these off during overhauls. We need to clean this and paint it with an even, thin cover. Not sure how to do this yet. Possibly just oil. Then we will mount the arms. Each arm has 4 ankers wich need to be tightened with a special tool. The original die weighed 1,6 tons. The table weighs 6 tons. This is so the die is perfectly even. We need some adoptions to mount the swiss dies. This requires still some engineering but is doable. The nice thing about this is that the coating roller can be swung away to start and stop the coating. We might do a video on this next week. The die does not need to move with all its mass and hit the gap-stones. So you don´t have scatter in first meters after dipping in.
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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RauschenOderKorn said:
When? Which sizes? How many €?
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When: When R&D has finished and the paper is ready to be coated. We are expecting a new young chemist in September for additional R&D.

Which Size: If we coat in Marly we can cut product up to 50x60 cm

Price: The new Polywarmtone ist much better than the old one and ofcourse made in Germany and Switzerland and back to Germany again for confectioning.
So don´t expect a bargain price. Like mentioned above on those batches we will actaully loose money. Ofcourse we want to keep these losses as limitd as possible but OTOH we cannot charge more than for Ilford MG Warmtone. So the price will be somwhere between MCC and MG Warmtone, probably on the upper end.

We will contact everyopne who preordered in time. No one has to stick to an order placed 5 years ago ofcourse.
We will ask if there still is demand and hope for the best ;-)
 
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Nodda Duma

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Awesome, ADOX. It's folks like you who will keep film photography alive and improving into the future.

I see two (three?) levels in the photos in the link.. out of curiosity .. how will your web path be laid out?

Also, anyway to get in on the Polywarmtone preorder at this time?

Cheers,
Jason
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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Nodda Duma said:
I see two (three?) levels in the photos in the link.. out of curiosity .. how will your web path be laid out?

Also, anyway to get in on the Polywarmtone preorder at this time?

Cheers,
Jason
Click to expand...

Similar to the machine in Switzerland. There was an image posted on Fotointern: https://www.fotointern.ch/archiv/2018/01/21/fotochemie-in-marly-von-ilford-bis-adox/

On the top floor is the stiffing section and a short first drying zone, then the first turn and swinging roller will come. The second drying zone is upside down with air coming from below. Then we need the first suction turn. The next drying zone (air from above, rest zone) can be extended into the old building to double in length. The same for the following Zone(s).
On the ground floor there is the aclimatisation, wind and unwind. Basically a larger version of the swiss machine with the option to move the swiss machine as well.

The polywarmtone website still works (much to my surprise): http://polywarmtone.com/English/register.php
 

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So it sounds like this is a Troller-Schweizer die (unless "Swiss Die" refers only to some die's physical location).

We had two basic die station configurations for slot dies- one in which the die moved the other in which the roller moved (and two configurations of that). For curtain dies we had yet another configuration, and the roll position was fixed. Myself and colleagues were involved in some finite element analysis of the die positioning relative to the substrate. Of course for any type of die coating this is critical.

How many layers are you cascading?
 
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ADOX Fotoimpex

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markjwyatt said:
So it sounds like this is a Troller-Schweizer die (unless "Swiss Die" refers only to some die's physical location).

How many layers are you cascading?
Click to expand...

Ilford engineering, probably built by Troller but at least maintained by them over the past decade. I would not be surprised if all of Troller at one point was a spin out, out of Ilford.
We have several dies for up to 8 layers but we will mount the small three layer cascade which can be seen in the video from Marly in the beginning. We won´t do curtain. Agfa flew at 120m/min. Therefore the angle of the Agfa die is steeper. However I know that this can run at 30 m/min as well. So maybe we are all set by simply fixing the die on the sliding chassis.
We expect more modifications to be necessary though. At least ofcourse the side plates to make up for the different coating roller diameter and vakuum sealing.
 
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