Help with Focomat iic

I have just rescued a badly modified iic. It had a durst mixing chamber and lpl colour head bolted on and a heavy piece of steel instead of the baseboard. 60 and 100 lenses and focusing stage look ok.

I have sourced a iic condenser head lamphouse and 35mm negative carrier. And correct wooden base. Leica eazel and colum set for 3cm baseboard.

Cams both move the focus stage smoothly...

Lenses both nice bright glass.

It looks great but the 60 focotar focus is way off. I can only get it to focus if i screw it most of the way into the helicoid and locking the focus stage to zero extension. This cant be right! It sticks so far into the enlarger one can not slide the platform to change lenses.

In this position prints are tack sharp but cant print more than 30cm long axis.

The 100 elmar focuses fine around middle of helicoid within range of its limiter and focus stays sharp with cam over whole range.

I can only assume i am missing something obvious. It all looks complete. The 60 lens doesnt appear to be missing any elements and it is very sharp all beit in a very odd setting and no auto focus.

I am hoping this is something that a regular user might have come accross. Have couple of pics before n after. Iron base also gone now replaced with correct wooden one.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Richard

When you stand in front of the enlarger, is the 60mm positioned on the right and the 100mm on the left?

Then, in the first picture your IIc lacks the Bowden cable. It looks like a cable release running from the left of the slider backwards and down. Do you have that cable?

Many thanks.
Yes 60 on the right. 100 on the left.
There is no cable but it is easy enough to activate the lower cam with the 60 lens by pushing a small screw driver down the track where the cable should go.

The cam moves freely as the head is moved up and down.

Its very puzzling. I wonder about the lens but it is a 60!

Thanks again

Richard

Tomorrow, I will have a look at my IIc. So I will be able to tell you what is routine when using the 60mm.

One thing: when you push the slider to the left to bring the 60mm in place, are you pushing the slider also upwards as indicated by the arrows?

When you don't and you use the screwdriver to push a metal 'wheel' out, that will land against the cam and not on it as it should.

When the wheel has landed on the cam it will follow the curve of the cam when you bring the enlarger up and down.

Richard

I had a look at what should happen when you bring the parallelogram down from the upper position:

1. first the bellows is totally folded

2. with the 100mm in position, the bellows begins to drop right away and gradually. When the parallelogram is almost down (plus minus 80 percent) it drops the last bit in one go. Do not worry if yours doesn't do that final drop, it just means it could use to be serviced. But if you need it to go down the final bit, you can push or pull it down. Its drop from being closed is about 7,5cm

3. with the 60mm in position, the bellows begins to drop right away and gradually. But not as far down as it does with the 100mm in place. Its drop is about 4cm.

I took away the Bowden cable: with the 100mm in position there is no difference when bringing the parallelogram down. However, with the 60mm installed the drop is like with the 100mm. Which will be the reason behind your problem.

Then I did what you have in mind, using a small hex key I pushed the 'wheel' out. But it comes right back in when I took out the hex key. Also, it landed against the lower cam, not on it.

---

The cable works perfectly. But it is the weak parameter of the IIc. As said before, when moving the slider without lifting as indicated, the wheel lands against the cam. That causes strain to the cable and is the reason why these cables break. I had that once about 30 years ago, then a Leitz repairer explained this to me and all is okay since.

Column setting

Hilo said:

Richard

I had a look at what should happen when you bring the parallelogram down from the upper position:

1. first the bellows is totally folded

2. with the 100mm in position, the bellows begins to drop right away and gradually. When the parallelogram is almost down (plus minus 80 percent) it drops the last bit in one go. Do not worry if yours doesn't do that final drop, it just means it could use to be serviced. But if you need it to go down the final bit, you can push or pull it down. Its drop from being closed is about 7,5cm

3. with the 60mm in position, the bellows begins to drop right away and gradually. But not as far down as it does with the 100mm in place. Its drop is about 4cm.

I took away the Bowden cable: with the 100mm in position there is no difference when bringing the parallelogram down. However, with the 60mm installed the drop is like with the 100mm. Which will be the reason behind your problem.

Then I did what you have in mind, using a small hex key I pushed the 'wheel' out. But it comes right back in when I took out the hex key. Also, it landed against the lower cam, not on it.

---

The cable works perfectly. But it is the weak parameter of the IIc. As said before, when moving the slider without lifting as indicated, the wheel lands against the cam. That causes strain to the cable and is the reason why these cables break. I had that once about 30 years ago, then a Leitz repairer explained this to me and all is okay since.

Click to expand...

Dear Hilo
Thanks so much for your help.
By describing how things should work for me i was able to cross reference. The difficulty was deciding what was normal without another enlarger for comparison.

Everything on mine moved as it should. I also cross checked the 60mm lens focal length with another 60mm Componon. Lens ok.


On this basis the abnormal focusing had to be because the negative was too far from the lens. Not easy but after careful studies of pictures on the net i discovered an extra 1cm slab of metal which was nicely machined and looked original. It must have been put there to adjust things for the colour head conversion.

You can see an extra step on my pictures! Removing this and focus is perfect. The only hassle now is sourcing 8 of the correct screws to put the bellows onto the correct surface. It had been crudely fixed with adhesive.

Im hoping this experience may help any one else rescuing a badly modified iic. I am sure a lot were modified with dichroic heads for colour printing.


Thanks again. Im happy.

Richard

I'm also working with a Leitz Focomat IIc that was way, way out of adjustment.

Everything seems good now except for the automatic focusing on the 100 mm lens. The 60 mm lens works fine, but if I adjust the focus on the 100 mm when the head is high up, then it quickly goes out of focus as I bring down the head. Not just a little bit, as might be the case if the cam needed adjustment. As soon as I move the head down even just a few inches, the image is already out of focus.

The Bowden cable system is intact and working smoothly. The cam and roller appear to be working correctly. I have the very confusing disengagement pin on the right pulled out. The column height is a 0 mm and I'm using the baseboard as my working surface.

Maybe the lens is not mounted correctly in the lens carrier? Any help would be appreciated!

Duggbug said:

Maybe the lens is not mounted correctly in the lens carrier? Any help would be appreciated!

Click to expand...

If the cam is engaged correctly and focus is correct at one enlargement-size but not any others it sounds as if the cam has been tinkered with or lens has been replaced with another one of slightly different fl.
How to recalibrate has been discussed on this forum:

But first make sure the cam is engaged, the roller is following the cam, and the bellows is moving up and down freely before you go and loosen the cam-screws.