Minolta 45A

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.

Are you thinking color, black and white?

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

Very cool good job cleaning it

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.

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

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.