Minolta 45A

[Joel_L]

Decades ago, the Minolta/Besler 45A caught my eye. Over the years I would watch for one on E-Bay. Always too expensive, too beat up, missing the probe, something. Last week I just happened to see one for not a lot of money, display didn't light up, control unresponsive. I certainly did not need it at this point, but it caught my interest and I do like to tinker, so I bought it, cheap enough.

It showed up yesterday, and yes, no display. First thing I did was shine a flashlight across the display, and I could see the LCD was active, great. Not that I can somewhat see the display I tried to get it to do something, focus, nothing, exposure, nothing, I could switch modes, so that's something.

I open the control up and removed the control board. What a mess. Corrosion on the button contacts, a couple traces in bad shape. I clean up the board, removed a wire hanging across the board after figuring out it was bypassing a bad via. I fixed the via instead. I cleaned all the crud off the button contacts and put the thing back together. low and behold, it now works, focus tube fires, the exposure tubes fire, nice.

I take it apart again and that it uses an EL backlight. The inverter was working, so I remove the EL panel and set it aside. I ordered an EL panel from Amazon and it came today. I cut it down to size, seal the edges with CA, and make some solder tabs for it. I slide that under the display, solder it to the inverter power pads and power up. Now it has a working back light.

I found one of the button pads was too corroded and was very flaky pressing. So scrape the remaining button off the board and cut a piece of copper tape to take it's place. I solder it and glue the edges and put things back together.

I have tried the basic functions and everything is working. Some functions I have not gotten to wotk yet, but might be because I don't know how to make them work. I'll go through the manual and see what I can learn.

Attached are some pics in random order.

 

[mshchem]

Are you thinking color, black and white?

These are cool, but not intuitive for me. Looking forward to seeing your progress!

 

[Bill Burk]

Very cool good job cleaning it

 

[Joel_L]

This morning I tried the probe, figured out enough to at least see it works and it does.

As far as, color or B&W, yes.

Right now, I still don't have a proper darkroom, si I'm pretty limited to just doing B&W, I can only print when it's dark out. I have been wanting to build something out and get back to color. Now that plan is on hold. I'm retiring at the end of the year, I know I want to move, so I need to get that settled before I do a proper darkroom.

Looks like the 45A is working fine. I have it set in place on my D5, I need to make some brackets so it properly fits the lift arms, it was so close. The only issue I ran into was the screws got the brackets were rusted in. I just drill them out and re tapped them for the mounting screws the D5 uses.

 

[xkaes]

Congratulations!!! Now comes the tough job -- stocking up on spare flash tubes. You won't need many, but GOOD LUCK!!!

 

[Robert Ley]

The 45A was my first color head for my Beseler 45. There was a learning curve in that it used the Additive system for color correction but once you figured that out it worked great and I used it for a couple of years but it got wonky and I could not get it to give me consistent results when making multiple color prints of the same image, not a huge difference but I could see it.
I then got a used Beseler Universal color head and that too worked well until the controller buttons started to get wonky too. I then went with the Beseler 45S which is more mechanical and that worked well until I stopped printing color. That color head was also great for variable contrast B&W printing and was a very even light source.
I still have the 45A and the Universal if anyone is interested. I will probably put them up for sale this spring.
I will say this about Beseler, they made rack solid and excellent enlargers, but anything they made with electronics sucked.