OK, so I checked it out today.
-First of all, the unit itself is probably 4 feet long, 2 feet high, and 2 feet wide, so pretty big, but not huge. However, the utility cart that had the other components mounted on it was pretty huge, it would almost certainly require a pickup truck to move.
-Apparently, how it works is this: there are 8 different compartments for chemicals, labelled 1-8. First, pick a barcoded card associated with the process you want: B+W, C-41, E-6, Cibachrome, etc and slide it in. Then, set your temperature, volume, etc. with some rotary dials. There are a bunch of other controls that I think control agitation, developer concentration, time/temperature, etc.
-The unit takes hot/cold water hookups to keep the temperature in control. I'm not sure if there is also an electric heater inside... I think there might be, and it would be nice to not have to hookup hot water as that might limit where I could put the thing.
-This is where the magic happens: You load in (Jobo-style?) rotary drums loaded with film, paper, whatever and the machine automatically dumps in the chemical, agitates, and then tilts the drum down a drain. The drain controller activates solenoids that control where the contents of the drum goes: the fix goes into a fix container below the machine or an SRU, the bleach into a bleach container, waste down the sewer, etc. This is the kinda lame part. To reuse black and white fix, one must manually dump it back into the machine, it won't reuse it automatically.
-The kit he had came with a ton of drums, but no reels. It looked like you could use Paterson style plastic reels and put them in the drums (these had a metal notch running down them to lock the reels in and keep them agitating with the drum). Maybe some Jobo users could inform me... does this sound like a normal rotary drum system? What reels would you have to use?
-His kit was pretty dirty, but it was super clean inside and it came with a ton of replacement parts, including new solenoids for the whole machine in case they ever broke.
Basically, I couldn't take this today because I don't have a truck, but I really want it. The guy was telling me about how he used a sensitometer to expose test strips, process them in this system, and then calibrate his film to the zone system with the densitometer he gave me. He must have had the world's most tightly controlled black and white process!
What I'm thinking is I could start a business where I do low-cost black and white film or E-6 processing. How cool would that be!
