Microflex C41 dip and dunk film processor

I scored a great deal on a Microflex 10 dip & dunk c41 film processor and am looking for anyone with information and experince on these machines. I will be attempting to convert it for B&W processing. I am not afraid of the challenge of resurrecting something so obscure.

I'm curious who built it (I can't find any information online about Microflex at all, and I think it may be a rebadge of something from an Italian company.)

Anyone out there who has owned or used one of these?

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years ago I bought my first house and was totally star struck, which helped me easily miss what a "challenge and resurrection" it would be. i easily sailed through the hard times! enjoy!

Yikes!

Best of luck with your "new" processor.

It doesn't look in too bad a condition. A good clean up will make it look more presentable. (Old darkroom equipment always looks worse that they really are)

I never operated this brand but did use a Durst of a similar size, over 40 years ago.

How old is your machine?

My understanding of the older D&D machines is that they are electro/mechanical and not microchipped. Therefore they should be fairly easy to repair and maintain. You might have to get creative when it comes to replacing parts.

I look forward to hearing and seeing your progress.

More pictures please

foc said:

Best of luck with your "new" processor.

It doesn't look in too bad a condition. A good clean up will make it look more presentable. (Old darkroom equipment always looks worse that they really are)

I never operated this brand but did use a Durst of a similar size, over 40 years ago.

How old is your machine?

My understanding of the older D&D machines is that they are electro/mechanical and not microchipped. Therefore they should be fairly easy to repair and maintain. You might have to get creative when it comes to replacing parts.

I look forward to hearing and seeing your progress.

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We're no stranger to antique and untested equipment and a little grime is easy enough to tackle! It'll spend most of its time in the dark so doesn't need to look very pretty.

We believe it dates to the late 1980s and was in use at a school portrait lab for many years. If it ends up being a lemon, at least it will be a fun adventure. For the price we paid (almost nothing) we're happy to take the risk. We do have the capability and experience to replace the control electronics with a modern microcontroller or PLC if it comes down to that, but only if we find that it's absolutely necessary.

We'll post some photos once we take posession of the machine and start to get it set up. Attached are all I have to go off of at the moment!

Going only off the suspicion that it's Italian, it could very well have been a Durst product that was sold as Microflex in the US.

Our intention is to modify it for developing B&W film, which will involve installing a heat exchanger to cool the developer tank. What we're hoping to figure out before it arrives is how much control over processing speed/developer time is built-in to the machine-- do you recall on the Durst machine how this was accomplished, and to what extent it could be slowed down for push processing?

I'm looking forward to seeing more of this. Are the film tins pictured from 70mm? Some of the portrait folks used 46mm? Other films wider than 35mm in the long roll cameras?

That looks to me like a roller transport machine rather than a dip & dunk...at least from the photos.
For a long-roll 'school photo' lab, roller transport seems to make more sense.
I could be totally out-to-lunch, though..

ilikecameras1010 said:

do you recall on the Durst machine how this was accomplished,

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The Durst had a clock/timer on a control panel similar to your one. The control panel had to be opened and a special key (stored inside the control panel) used to "unlock" the clock and make timing adjustments.

ilikecameras1010 said:

We're no stranger to antique and untested equipment and a little grime is easy enough to tackle! It'll spend most of its time in the dark so doesn't need to look very pretty.

We believe it dates to the late 1980s and was in use at a school portrait lab for many years. If it ends up being a lemon, at least it will be a fun adventure. For the price we paid (almost nothing) we're happy to take the risk. We do have the capability and experience to replace the control electronics with a modern microcontroller or PLC if it comes down to that, but only if we find that it's absolutely necessary.

We'll post some photos once we take posession of the machine and start to get it set up. Attached are all I have to go off of at the moment!

Going only off the suspicion that it's Italian, it could very well have been a Durst product that was sold as Microflex in the US.

Our intention is to modify it for developing B&W film, which will involve installing a heat exchanger to cool the developer tank. What we're hoping to figure out before it arrives is how much control over processing speed/developer time is built-in to the machine-- do you recall on the Durst machine how this was accomplished, and to what extent it could be slowed down for push processing?

Click to expand...

Looks like theres hangers for 120/220 and 35mm. The darkside will need some sort of a revolving door or similar light tight exit if you want to escape during processing. Looks neat if it can be brought back to life.

mshchem said:

I'm looking forward to seeing more of this. Are the film tins pictured from 70mm? Some of the portrait folks used 46mm? Other films wider than 35mm in the long roll cameras?

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I believe the operator used both 35mm and "split 70mm" (where ID/name information was imprinted in the negative next to the image) cameras. Generally these did use long roll magazines, and I'll have to ask how they were developing long rolls (possibly in a different machine).
I don't think they were using 46mm although I have a couple of 46mm school portrait cameras in my personal collection. Interesting beasts!

The company that owned it is still active, but has been all digital since the late 1990s (apparently this got them on the cover of PMA magazine at the time).

It has the hangers for 35 and 120 roll film, and we think it can do 4x5 as well if we build a custom hanger for it.

We're picking up a revolving door in Rhode Island soon for the darkroom.

foc said:

The Durst had a clock/timer on a control panel similar to your one. The control panel had to be opened and a special key (stored inside the control panel) used to "unlock" the clock and make timing adjustments.

Click to expand...

Very excited to get my hands on it and start playing around with the machine!

A quick update for anyone following the thread. We have the machine, it’s set up and filled with water in the chemical tanks. We’re building a darkroom around the machine. Electrical is in place, plumbing goes in tomorrow, and drywall starts on Tuesday. We will test it with chemicals and film before the end of the month.

We have gotten to know the machine and its story pretty well since picking it up in September. It was made by Attrezzature Forografiche Industriali (AFI) which was an Italian manufacturer. All we can find out about them is that they had a booth at Photokina one year in the early 2000s. Nothing online about what other products they made. The owner got a fantastic deal when he got the machine, it was apparently about $6,500 delivered and installed in the early 90s. I don’t know if he got it new or used.

Our machine is reasonably well-built. We went to pick it up in southern West Virginia. The fellow who owned it is a great guy and has a really impressive business doing all the school portraits and yearbooks in the region for 30 years. He went digital very early and was a real innovator in the field. They skipped the era of scanning film, and went straight from analog with Lucht package printers and traditional darkroom enlargements to digital capture and output with a roll-to-roll digital-C printer.

One day 20+ years ago they turned the dip and dunk machine off and closed the door and forgot about it. The chemicals were never drained and remained as a pile of crystals and sludge in each tank until we got it back to New York. A family of rats had moved in and made their home (or at least their bathroom) in the machine. It was really gross but I can’t blame the rats because they’re so cute and nice. It’s clean now after a lot of work.

There’s not a single computer in the machine. The whole thing is controlled by a few timing relays. One for the developer time, one for how long the transport pauses at the top of its cycle, one for how long the dryer transport motor should run, one double timer for how long the nitrogen burst agitation runs for and how often, and one for how long the replenishment pumps should run. Some are solid state and some are electromechanical. One of them wasn’t operational when we got the machine but we replaced it pretty easily with a unit that’s still produced. There are a few circulation pumps which needed a good cleaning but seem to work fine.

We’ll update the thread again with some photos and videos once it’s fully operational. I will go into detail about how it works because it’s quite interesting in its simplicity compared to the minilab film processors we’ve been using in our lab for years. These deliver good results but we hope to achieve even better quality with the dip and dunk.

ilikecameras1010 said:

A quick update for anyone following the thread. We have the machine, it’s set up and filled with water in the chemical tanks. We’re building a darkroom around the machine. Electrical is in place, plumbing goes in tomorrow, and drywall starts on Tuesday. We will test it with chemicals and film before the end of the month.

We have gotten to know the machine and its story pretty well since picking it up in September. It was made by Attrezzature Forografiche Industriali (AFI) which was an Italian manufacturer. All we can find out about them is that they had a booth at Photokina one year in the early 2000s. Nothing online about what other products they made. The owner got a fantastic deal when he got the machine, it was apparently about $6,500 delivered and installed in the early 90s. I don’t know if he got it new or used.

Our machine is reasonably well-built. We went to pick it up in southern West Virginia. The fellow who owned it is a great guy and has a really impressive business doing all the school portraits and yearbooks in the region for 30 years. He went digital very early and was a real innovator in the field. They skipped the era of scanning film, and went straight from analog with Lucht package printers and traditional darkroom enlargements to digital capture and output with a roll-to-roll digital-C printer.

One day 20+ years ago they turned the dip and dunk machine off and closed the door and forgot about it. The chemicals were never drained and remained as a pile of crystals and sludge in each tank until we got it back to New York. A family of rats had moved in and made their home (or at least their bathroom) in the machine. It was really gross but I can’t blame the rats because they’re so cute and nice. It’s clean now after a lot of work.

There’s not a single computer in the machine. The whole thing is controlled by a few timing relays. One for the developer time, one for how long the transport pauses at the top of its cycle, one for how long the dryer transport motor should run, one double timer for how long the nitrogen burst agitation runs for and how often, and one for how long the replenishment pumps should run. Some are solid state and some are electromechanical. One of them wasn’t operational when we got the machine but we replaced it pretty easily with a unit that’s still produced. There are a few circulation pumps which needed a good cleaning but seem to work fine.

We’ll update the thread again with some photos once it’s fully operational.

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I'm following this thread. Looking forward to seeing more pictures. It must be a well made unit to survive the use and abuse.

It sure would be great to know more about the company that made this. Maybe someone here will chime in.

Good luck on your project!

Thanks for the update as I am following this with keen interest. I look forward to you progress. Best wishes. Felim.

ilikecameras1010 said:

The whole thing is controlled by a few timing relays.

Click to expand...

You might want to verify the timings; there's a good chance the timing ultimately relies on the value of a capacitor, and these tend to drift.