Jobo Processors - what will everyone do when his Jobo dies?

Bob Carnie said:

Kino
I would love for you to come to replace a lift arm on a Alt 2300, If you can do it I tip my hat to you.

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The ATL 3000 I purchased would not fit in my station wagon, so, with no prior knowledge of how to remove the head, I did so in about 1.5 hours and replaced it without a problem when I got home in a like time frame -- after cleaning it and repairing a small fracture in the tempering bath tray.

I can do it. I can do it for $75 USD an hour plus parts and travel.

Is the lift arm itself broken or is the motor just burned out or can you tell?

Kino
Whenever a lift arm is replaced on my Alt 3000 or Alt 2300 it is a 7-1200 hundred Canadian Dollars purchase, Omega Sattar does not have these suckers in stock and they have to come from Germany which they quote 90days. Pretty hard to take when we are processing volumes of film every second day.The technician that does the work on my Jobos is factory trained in Germany, it takes him pretty much a full day and is not a pretty site seeing him get to the guts of the machine to replace the lift arm . Replacing the old silicone and getting it ship shape to me is a wonder.
You must be pretty good in my books , as I have 5 thumbs and have trouble aligning my enlargers let alone replacing parts on my processors.
The main worry for me is a solid replacement for the Jobo if they stop making replacement parts.
A lift arm has approx 36,000 lifts. On my main machine I have replaced the lift arm more than 4 times since I bought the unit. I just purchased the Alt 3000 as a secondary backup unit and am in the market for any used alt2300 or alt3000.
Presently both machines are working*knock on wood* and I have just purchased a manual cpp unit as a backup to our backup.



QUOTE=Kino;510384]The ATL 3000 I purchased would not fit in my station wagon, so, with no prior knowledge of how to remove the head, I did so in about 1.5 hours and replaced it without a problem when I got home in a like time frame -- after cleaning it and repairing a small fracture in the tempering bath tray.

I can do it. I can do it for $75 USD an hour plus parts and travel.

Is the lift arm itself broken or is the motor just burned out or can you tell?[/QUOTE]

Bob Carnie said:

Kino
Whenever a lift arm is replaced on my Alt 3000 or Alt 2300 it is a 7-1200 hundred Canadian Dollars purchase, Omega Sattar does not have these suckers in stock and they have to come from Germany which they quote 90days. Pretty hard to take when we are processing volumes of film every second day.The technician that does the work on my Jobos is factory trained in Germany, it takes him pretty much a full day and is not a pretty site seeing him get to the guts of the machine to replace the lift arm . Replacing the old silicone and getting it ship shape to me is a wonder.
You must be pretty good in my books , as I have 5 thumbs and have trouble aligning my enlargers let alone replacing parts on my processors.
The main worry for me is a solid replacement for the Jobo if they stop making replacement parts.
A lift arm has approx 36,000 lifts. On my main machine I have replaced the lift arm more than 4 times since I bought the unit. I just purchased the Alt 3000 as a secondary backup unit and am in the market for any used alt2300 or alt3000.
Presently both machines are working*knock on wood* and I have just purchased a manual cpp unit as a backup to our backup.

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Bob,

My prior post was "in general" for the home enthusiast; sorry if it offended you.

The turn of last century produced a flourish of do it yourself books; Boy Mechanic series, Popular Mechanics, etc, that taught the workings of the World and how you could fabricate and invent solutions to problems yourself. That has been replaced with few and far between, anemic publications like "Make" and most people (consumers) cannot be bothered to learn how their World either works or how they can improvise to beat problems that confront them...

It must be a real worry to a commercial lab that doesn't have the time and money to break stride and prototype a new processor, let alone wait for routine repairs.

My mechanical skills come from growing up poor; you fix what others discard so you can make do. It was not a gift, but a necessity, and we all know what a Mother that can be...

It is a uncertain time to be unconditionally relying on systems and businesses based on scales of economy long since passed; the methods of management used by these companies like Kodak and Jobo have been passed by as their markets shrink and are inefficient for the modern marketplace. Sadly, it seems they refuse to modify their methods other than to keep cutting back their critical infrastructure, retaining high paid CEOs and and slowly starve to death.

That being said, most mass produced systems are constructed of off the shelf items that, although it takes a bit of research, can be rebuilt with like type components or alternate configurations IF you get that desperate.

However, now with the proliferation of used machines on the market, you should be snapping them up for spares. They are cheap and fairly plentiful and in places you wouldn't think likely... like my garage...

I bought my ATL 3000 on a whim; won't do that again!

If you want my ATL 3000, PM me; we can certainly work something out, even if you want me to just pull the head, scavenge the rest of the carcass for parts and throw the rest out to save on shipping.

Frank

Tom Duffy said:

as long as you can get a new motor and heating coil, I don't know what else can really break?

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I've repaired my CPA several times over the years. Besides the heating element, and the motor, I have also had to replace the motor controller card (electronic circuit board, read no user serviceable elements!)

Hi Frank

No offence taken, I was just amazed that someone would be able to tear apart a lift arm, maybe I am getting hosed by my tech.

Sadly, I think all that you say is true, the manufacurers are moving on and we are left scabbing parts and such to keep our processes alive.
I am in the film processing game until the day I die , hopefully not for another 40 years.I have invested heavily with Jobo products and I will be pissed the day they stop producing the parts.
I am interested in the unit for parts, pm me your location and price and we should be able to set something up.
I have designed a film processing unit that would satisfy the bulk of our film and paper processing needs, but unfortunately it is extremely expensive. All parts would be off the shelf in NA which to me is vital, and it would be serviced locally by the tech people we are asking to build it.
I think within 4years I will be in a position to build it. I can't go into the details as I wouldn't want anyone to scoop my design.

I don't think the tech is hosing you; he's just charging rates that reflect the old affluence of the company, not the modern reality.

Glad to hear you are being proactive in the design of a machine and using off the shelf parts.

It is a miracle what a stamp controller and stepper motors can do...

Wilbur, its not as hard as it would seem, eh? That's not to say you mustn't be careful...

Frank

All efforts to build an auto or semi automatic developing machine are ending in high costs due to the fact the market for such machines is rather limited.
Look at the Heiland TAS: All B&W processes you can do with it. With a peltier heating element it should be possible to do C41 development. It runs on 70V-250V/50-60Hz.
It will accept small tanks, wide tanks, different brands and even a sheet film tank.

The construction is hardly to beat in reliability but the end of the story is the price: Eur. 800,00 because the machine is sold in very small quantities so the production costs are very high.

If you're going to calculated with a uP, sturdy SS materials and high quality plastic materials, stepper motor and all mechanical connections you need to keep it practical in use, you will end already in a high priced machine.

My problem is all my stuff is working except the motor is not working is it possible that the motor is fine which i just got and was working perfectly on another processor a few days ago? Could it be something else all fuses are not blown and so i wonder if its the motor control unit? any help would be greatly appreciated... Thanks Ted

I recently bought a second-hand CPP which worked as you describe, except that the motor would start after about a minute, and then only at the highest speed setting. I bought another control unit and now the motor works perfectly.

If you have a meter you could disconect the motor leads and measure the voltage to see if the controller is providing any power to the motor.

On mine, when I opened it, there was a fair amount of crystalized chemstry in the housing, and a good bit of corrosion on some of the metal parts.

Here are the voltages I measured from the working controller;
F - 5.5 v
3 - 9.53 v
4 - 13.25 v
P - 16.69 v
6 - 19.79 v
7 - 22.59 v

And on the bad one, I get 3.76 volts with the knob at 7

The Jobo is the best thing for roll film and I still use my CPP occasionally for 120 film. I would hate to have to go back to manually processing roll film but it would not be the end of the world.

I switched over to BTZS tubes for 4x5 film and am quite pleased. The only hassle is all of the tubes and caps but that is manageable and takes up less space than the myriad Jobo tubes. (I need to start selling on Ebay.) I like the fact that I can adjust the time and developer for each sheet of film, even within the same run. The downside is the practical limit of 6 sheets at a time.

I hope they will service my ATL-1500. I think I actually got the last one built. Took 1 year of cajoling the president of Jobo in Germany to push the order through.

If anyone has the ATL chemical separator (for silver reclamation, I would love to buy it).

I have a CPP but don't (really can't) take it with me when I travel. So, I develop in motel rooms using the 3005 and 3006 expert drums with a motorized roller, i.e. Beseler. It's worked very well, but you need to babysit it, i.e. randomly reverse direction and pick up the drum and "wobble" it every minute or so to avoid drag. Of course you need to watch it so the drum doesn't fall off. I do this with pyro and "normal" developers. I tested an 8x10 sheet of Efke (adox forumula) yesterday; the scene had a large clear sky; it was perfectly even.

I have a CPE-2 which is beginning to sound "funny" once in a while. I think I saw somewhwere that early models of these used a Merceds-Benz windscreen wiper motor, so I'm preparing to trawl the local scrapyards for a replacement...

I saw rumors that they are BMW motors, but it's much smaller than the one I remember from a Volvo I used to have. It's maybe more likely similar to a tailgate wiper. However, it gets a good bit more voltage than an automotive wiper motor would get.
I looked carefully to find a maker name or part number but couldn't find anything.

I've been on the look out for one for the last 2 years (anyone in Adelaide wanna sell one for under $1000?), but since one hasn't cropped up conveniently I've started making plans to build my own. Poor university students must compromise. It's a simple concept - PIC controllers, stepper motors and heating elements.
All of the knowledge and parts for this sort of technology are freely available, but I have a long shopping list and a small budget so it isn't gonna be completed any time soon. Doesn't hurt to make plans though.

In addition to my own work, I process B&W for a few local custom labs. I successfully used a CPP-2 for many years. Inevitably, the motor died on me. While it was being repaired I reverted to my Paterson System 4. For the labs the change was seamless; for me the change was quite dramatic. For my own work I noted increased sharpness and better tonal gradation in my negatives. Not sure why but, (unfortunately, because it's a pain in the you-know-what) there was a definite and quite dramatic improvement when I switched to manual.

Bob - that is a disturbing observation that I will have to look into. Constant agitation is my first guess as to the differences.

""Constant agitation is my first guess as to the differences""-- I guess that is at least one reason among many that she packed her stuff and hit the road !! Joe B. or is that Joe Bo
Isn't that odd!