Hi guys,
This may well be a candidate for one of the weirdest threads on here, but please bear with me
I'm toying with the idea of putting together some form of automatic (or semi-automatic) film processor for B&W film. I've got a Paterson 35 Model II tank at the moment, which is pretty darn nice -- 245ml capacity (though it can be filled to 250ml which makes the math easier when mixing chemistry), and when used with ID11, Ilfostop, Ilford Rapid fixer and Ilfotol wetting agent, cost-per-film ends up at about £1.30.
The problem is, it takes me ~5 minutes to load a film, 15 minutes for the processing (ID11 at 1+1), then 30 seconds stop, about 5 minutes to fix, and a 15 minute wash. Then I've got to deal with drying the film and so forth.
Thing is, I'm lazy by nature... so what I'd like to do is rig something up to do a bit of the menial labour for me. Essentially, a homebrew film processor. At one point Ilford did the FP40 -- a three-bath-plus-wash short-leader processor with replenishment, and Bray made the Midget (which if memory serves was a long-leader processor with no replenisher, basically one-shot for chemistry). There's also the Jobo ATL(?) series rotary processors...
Problem is, all these lovely machines are discontinued, and when they're seen on the second hand market, they're bloody expensive.
I think I know the answer to this question, but... has anyone had a crack at building a homebrew "poor man's film processor"?
I was thinking something along the lines of a short-leader processor based on the Fuji FP300 and 500 design -- a plastic leader is spliced onto the end of the film, then toothed belts and gears on process racks are used to pull the film through the processor. The size of the process racks and speed of the drive motor determines the length of time the film spends in the various solutions -- typically the dev:stop:fix ratio is fixed, but the motor speed is variable. Meaning, you could push-process (add developer time) but your film spends proportionally longer in the fixer and stopbath as well.
The other option would be to take the "Bodge it and Scarper" route -- drill a couple of holes in a Paterson S4 tank, load it manually, then have a system of pumps and drain valves to fill and drain the tank. Problem then is that the film has to be loaded onto a reel, then loaded into the machine in absolute darkness -- the 'fill' hole would have to be on the lid, and the 'drain' hole on the base, unless there was some form of "rotate the tank 180 degrees to drain it" mechanism installed...
Adding some form of dryer would also be handy -- perhaps based on a cheap Argos hair dryer (or two) and a temperature controller. Could even add temperature control for the process chemistry (read: fish tank heaters!)
This is all me thinking out loud... does anyone think this idea is worth pursuing, or is there another commonly-available film processor that goes for very little money and still has reasonable parts availability?
I do electronics work as a hobby so repairing the electronic bits wouldn't be hard; it's just the 'specialised' stuff like pumps, motors, heating elements and filters I'd be worried about.
I'd be interested in the group's thoughts on this idea (I'm expecting a lot of PMs to the effect of "this is nuts!")
-Phil.
This may well be a candidate for one of the weirdest threads on here, but please bear with me
I'm toying with the idea of putting together some form of automatic (or semi-automatic) film processor for B&W film. I've got a Paterson 35 Model II tank at the moment, which is pretty darn nice -- 245ml capacity (though it can be filled to 250ml which makes the math easier when mixing chemistry), and when used with ID11, Ilfostop, Ilford Rapid fixer and Ilfotol wetting agent, cost-per-film ends up at about £1.30.
The problem is, it takes me ~5 minutes to load a film, 15 minutes for the processing (ID11 at 1+1), then 30 seconds stop, about 5 minutes to fix, and a 15 minute wash. Then I've got to deal with drying the film and so forth.
Thing is, I'm lazy by nature... so what I'd like to do is rig something up to do a bit of the menial labour for me. Essentially, a homebrew film processor. At one point Ilford did the FP40 -- a three-bath-plus-wash short-leader processor with replenishment, and Bray made the Midget (which if memory serves was a long-leader processor with no replenisher, basically one-shot for chemistry). There's also the Jobo ATL(?) series rotary processors...
Problem is, all these lovely machines are discontinued, and when they're seen on the second hand market, they're bloody expensive.
I think I know the answer to this question, but... has anyone had a crack at building a homebrew "poor man's film processor"?
I was thinking something along the lines of a short-leader processor based on the Fuji FP300 and 500 design -- a plastic leader is spliced onto the end of the film, then toothed belts and gears on process racks are used to pull the film through the processor. The size of the process racks and speed of the drive motor determines the length of time the film spends in the various solutions -- typically the dev:stop:fix ratio is fixed, but the motor speed is variable. Meaning, you could push-process (add developer time) but your film spends proportionally longer in the fixer and stopbath as well.
The other option would be to take the "Bodge it and Scarper" route -- drill a couple of holes in a Paterson S4 tank, load it manually, then have a system of pumps and drain valves to fill and drain the tank. Problem then is that the film has to be loaded onto a reel, then loaded into the machine in absolute darkness -- the 'fill' hole would have to be on the lid, and the 'drain' hole on the base, unless there was some form of "rotate the tank 180 degrees to drain it" mechanism installed...
Adding some form of dryer would also be handy -- perhaps based on a cheap Argos hair dryer (or two) and a temperature controller. Could even add temperature control for the process chemistry (read: fish tank heaters!)
This is all me thinking out loud... does anyone think this idea is worth pursuing, or is there another commonly-available film processor that goes for very little money and still has reasonable parts availability?
I do electronics work as a hobby so repairing the electronic bits wouldn't be hard; it's just the 'specialised' stuff like pumps, motors, heating elements and filters I'd be worried about.
I'd be interested in the group's thoughts on this idea (I'm expecting a lot of PMs to the effect of "this is nuts!")
-Phil.