Jobo ATL-1000 water bath problem

I'm using an ATL-1000 which hasn't seen much use in a while. On the B&W program, the water bath never fills, and the processing begins immediately. I've confirmed that it works as expected for E6 processing, filling the bath, heating the water and running the recirculation pump.

The manual says the unit won't try and fill the bath for B&W if the developer is over 24C, but I've verified that the developer is well under that (I tested with 19C water).

One possibility is that the unit is not reading the temperature of the developer correctly and thinking it's over 24C. Does that sound reasonable?

Any suggestions on troubleshooting this?

The ATL 1000 will not fill the bath in any BW mode, regardless of temp, and even though the manual said i will not start the run under 24C.
To overcome this, you can either fill the bath manually, with the little water button, or you can start the machine on a color process with the lid open and the drum not installed, and keep a thermometer in the first bottle. Once the desired temp have been achieved, turn the machine off, install the tank, set the correct program, close the lid and restart the machine.

Thanks.

I wonder why they didn't design it to work like that for b&w. Seems like a simple thing to enable in the programming.

This is a question that has come up many times, and i have asked Jobo Germany about this and have no clear answer.
It appears that this was part of the original programming, but never got implemented. It is after all a fairly simple thing.

This guy hacked the ATL 1000 chip and kind of made his own custom process:
http://photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00bZqn

From what he told me and i think that is also in the text, there is no way to adjust the main sequence of the process, including the temperature and main water bath fill - maybe this can be done with some more programming knowledge or tinkering.

I just set my water panel to 20deg C, put the tank in, set the ATL-1000 to E6 with the lid open and turn it on. When the water bath is at the right level, it will turn off. Turn the ATL-1000 off, change to the desired B&W program, turn it back on and close the lid.

This is how I've been doing it for years...

My ATL-1000 fills the water bath, and heats it to 24°C and it then starts processing when the developer reaches 24°C. I guess not all ATL-1000s are programmed the same way.

Trond

You're right trond, my c41 starts at 24 and the e6 starts at 39.

Several variations out there apparently! Mine actually does E6 and C41 at 38°C and B&W at 24°C.