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.
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
