My Jobo's are on their last legs

[DanielStone]

so bob,

kind of like the motor bases with drive wheels underneath? I'd imagine that would be really simple to gear/belt up...

if you had 2-3/4? bases, all in a 40x50 sized tray(stainless), with a timer for each above, I'd imagine it to be quite simple. Or, you could do a tiered system, with 3-4 tanks going in a vertical formation, taking up less sq. footage.

but you've had a lot of great suggestions here, so it might take a while for you guys to sort through everything.

-Dan

 

[Renato Tonelli]

FIY - After an earlier lead in this thread, I contacted Fotoimpex about the availability of a new CPP-2 and they informed me that they are sold out.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Hi Folks

Richard and I have just finished our meeting and going to lunch now.

We are set in a plan and he is going to start putting a shopping list together for me of parts and timers.
It was a good meeting and our mandate is to make a very Robust, very simplistic system all with off the shelf parts.

I will be meeting again with him late Jan and we should have most of the prototype put together by then to runs some film.

Bob

 

[DanielStone]

hey bob,

make sure to post some pictures! Have you decided on a name for it yet?

hope you had a merry christmas!

-Dan

 

[Dave Dawson]

"very simplistic system all with off the shelf parts."

Is that parts available today or in 20 years time?

Cheers Dave

 

[Bob Carnie]

Good Point

I will make sure that once all 4 units are built , I will then stock up on extra parts to last until the days of the *depends filling up.*

"very simplistic system all with off the shelf parts."

Is that parts available today or in 20 years time?

Cheers Dave

 

[Mike Wilde]

Bob, if you are interested in doing a microcontroller approch, get in touch with John Day. He works out in Georgetown a few days a week, and at home other days, and does other electronics and control design jobs on the side. He lives down in Leslieville, and has lots of experience in electrical control design and fiddling with microcontrollers and computer interfacing. Look up John Day CPI on LinkedIn, or give hime a call (4) 461-2573.

I spoke to him while over at his place on new years eve, and outlined your fix to Jobo dumping effective support for NA. He said the project sounded interesting,a nd something that he could take on. I outlined that the job was an 'open source' type project so that any and all could benefit from the design work being done.

Back in his pre university days quite some years ago he was up on photography and processing his own colour material in the early 70's , so photography variables to control in development are not something that you would have to teach this guy. He elected to chase electrical enginering through uni, and put the photographer/lab tech career to the side.

 

[Andrew Moxom]

Dead Link Removed Bob, this link has some ideas for you too... Some folks in China are already looking into this!!

 

[tim_walls]

Bob, if you are interested in doing a microcontroller approch, get in touch with John Day. He works out in Georgetown a few days a week, and at home other days, and does other electronics and control design jobs on the side. He lives down in Leslieville, and has lots of experience in electrical control design and fiddling with microcontrollers and computer interfacing. Look up John Day CPI on LinkedIn, or give hime a call (4) 461-2573.

I spoke to him while over at his place on new years eve, and outlined your fix to Jobo dumping effective support for NA. He said the project sounded interesting,a nd something that he could take on. I outlined that the job was an 'open source' type project so that any and all could benefit from the design work being done.

Back in his pre university days quite some years ago he was up on photography and processing his own colour material in the early 70's , so photography variables to control in development are not something that you would have to teach this guy. He elected to chase electrical enginering through uni, and put the photographer/lab tech career to the side.

Trust me, as a former embedded systems engineer it massively pains me to say this, but the microcontroller approach may be more trouble than it's worth.

Computers are verrrrrry cheap, whereas tragically displays/lights/good quality switches will probably wind up being the most expensive components of (the electronic aspects of) your build.


You may be better off building a very simple interface to the hardware that lets you control it from a computer. That way you can have effectively 'infinite' control over processing, and you don't waste your budget on buttons and lights...

A simple USB interface which let the computer control the motors/valves/etc. would be trivial to cobble together. You may even find you can use an existing off-the-shelf device such as this...

http://www.metis-products.co.uk/USBRelayController.shtm

...and the user interface for your processing machine can run on a cheap-as-chips laptop or something, and be written in Visual Basic by any half competent programmer.



Still, if you do go the embedded microcontroller route - use an Intel 8051 series device will ya? For old times' sake for me .

 

[wildtypitch]

Not sure if this is the same as the Chinese guys linked above (link don't work) (there was a url link here which no longer exists)
Prices not too bad, but considering they have no level of automation or no lift mechanism they are not much more useful than a sink with a fish tank heater. I am too very interested in in open source processors but not having an training in electronics or motors it would demand too much of my photo time to do. It seems that there are people out there that could rattle off the schematics for this type of thing over a cup of coffee.
I've seen many diy projects that seem great but just reading about them takes up too much of my time, time I should be using to take pictures. The whole idea for me having a processor is to save money/time.
But I do love the idea of a diy processor kit, a booklet identifying parts and how to assemble like a mechano set running from a pc-usb together with my LED enlarger head.
Can an automated processor be a cheap thing to purchase with off the shelf parts?

 

[antoinek]

Bob,
I've got a machine shop contact in Newmarket I do control systems work for occassionally. Between the two of us we could pretty well build/repair most things, although I can't say it would be inexpensive.

As for the controls, any AB PLC off ebay will do (or buy new from the local distributor). There are many many electricians / engineers around the Toronto area (including me) that can program it.

Anthony.

 

[Jordan.K]

Has anyone ever considered or actually built some sort of device that would allow the jobo lift to be used on it's own? The lift itself is super handy having used one once. I can't remember if the drum can spin freely when attached to the lift.... can anyone answer that for me? I have been thinking of ways to utilize the lift and my expert drums without the actual processor. Let me know if anyone has any experience with this or at least some ideas.

 

[AMBYSTOMA]

jobo is on its last legs

the CPP2 can be purchased brand new in Germany albeit with 220v power requirement; I have not read all the threads on this topic but purchasing a new machine while they are available is a much better option than trying to re engineer the product. I recently purchased a black unit (allegedly the last production) and am keeping it in storage in case my current CPP2 becomes unrepairable.

 

[Mahler_one]

Has anyone ever considered or actually built some sort of device that would allow the jobo lift to be used on it's own? The lift itself is super handy having used one once. I can't remember if the drum can spin freely when attached to the lift.... can anyone answer that for me? I have been thinking of ways to utilize the lift and my expert drums without the actual processor. Let me know if anyone has any experience with this or at least some ideas.

The tank will not spin when the lift is raised...the attachment to the gog gear is severed, to be reunited when the lift is lowered and the cog on the top of the tank re-engages with the turning "gog gear" that is powered by the motor...

Ed

 

[Sonicmook56]

There's a lot of good info here. I'm not sure how much more I can contribute to this thread at this point but: Any machine shop can build the base to your drawings. From milling lift arms to turning pulleys and welding stainless tanks. The frustrating part is having expensive parts re made when a hole is off .02" because you forgot about a tiny detail. As many here have recommended, I see a great advantage to use stepper motors and NC programing from a cheap computer instead of cobbling a bunch of PIC's together. Lost of industrial automation equipment is built to NEMA standards, so replacement parts can be found globally from different manufactures. I would forget about using parts from automobiles. There are better alternatives available.

 

[Bob Carnie]

UPDATE

We are now at the stage of gathering materials, we have ended up with a very simple design basically a Unicolor rotation system on steroids.

The rubber rollers with be 4ft two of them not in a water bath.
They will be connected with a drive timing belt to a reversable drive motar that will have two times, small film rotation, large film rotation.

We are going to use a very simple timer to count down process time like the good old days. I believe that this will make my young technicans more aware of the process.

We will have a water bath unit just to the side, all chems will be in stainless steel graduates and our technicians will hand pour, twist and shout the film for the first 15-30 seconds and then place on the rollers at a stop position.

We will mimic our Jobo rotation duration as best we can.

We are adapting all our small tanks, to lie flat on the rollers, the 4x5 and larger tanks have already been adapted by Jobo.
As long as the tank lies flat, you can get chems in fast this system will work for any tank system you have.

We should be able to run two or three runs at a time and if set up right two operators should be able to work side by side using two different graylab timers.

I believe that we will be able to handle very large projects and small one run projects .

We will still be using one shot chemistry for all steps , distilled water for PMK dev, final wetting agent rinse.
First step will be to find out our new times, but if all works well we should be very close right off the bat.

Plans are to make 2 units with portable side units to hold in the very large drums.

film size 35mm Jobo tanks to 16x20 Jobo tanks, we will be making a drum for 20 inch roll film and 30 inch roll film.. largest size of film we will make is 30inch x 46inch.
The large films are being made for alternative negatives and separation negatives, for platinum, carbon, and tricolour gum.
We will be using the laser exposing unit for this and to date have found out it works with Rollie 25 ISO ortho film in HC110.

As this project moves forward , I will only be able to describe in detail on Hybrid.com this sister site as the front end will be digital and the back end wet process.

Very fun time.. Richard has been great and a wonderful , talented resource.

thanks Richard.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

Bob,

A couple of points: Firstly, it looks as though you've made excellent progress; I'll certainly be interested in the plans and design as you go along. Is the 30"x36" film being custom cut by ILFORD?, and are you exposing the film for alternative process via "electronic" means?

Second, yesterday my Jobo came up with the message 'air diffuser fault - end manually', and again refused to work today. Do you have any experience with this fault?

Tom

PS) It seems you don't accept APUG private messages?

 

[dwdmguy]

For what it's worth, I'm going to be selling my MINT Jobo ATL-2300 soon here in NJ. Can't ship but its worth the drive. I'm not putting in classifieds just yet but felt this thread is ok because you seem to be in need and wanted to give you a heads up. I purchased this from a Police Lab in Detroit whereas they used it, according to them, only several times and I believe it.
I hate selling but times warrant it.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

For what it's worth, I'm going to be selling my MINT Jobo ATL-2300 soon here in NJ. Can't ship but its worth the drive. I'm not putting in classifieds just yet but felt this thread is ok because you seem to be in need and wanted to give you a heads up. I purchased this from a Police Lab in Detroit whereas they used it, according to them, only several times and I believe it.
I hate selling but times warrant it.

I suspect my unit had a good deal of use before I came into possession of it.

Tom

 

[Bob Carnie]

Tom

I was told by the Harmon dealer in Canada that I would have to order 23 rolls of film , 30inch x100ft . To beta test this was too much of a risk for me, If it did not work I was not sure what to do with 22 rolls of film.
I found Rollie ISO 25 which cut a 43 inch x100ft roll into two 20inch x100ft for around $1800.00
Yes I am exposing by electronic means- Lambda.

Regarding the fault, I would imagine we have seen every problem, but I am not the technician as I hire him privately to keep my Jobo's alive. Sorry I cannot help you here.
I am down to one Alt 3 and I hope it lasts long enough to get me to the point of using my new system.

The Jobo's owe me nothing , paid for many times over .

You can email me , but you are right I turned off the pm years ago.

Bob

Bob,

A couple of points: Firstly, it looks as though you've made excellent progress; I'll certainly be interested in the plans and design as you go along. Is the 30"x36" film being custom cut by ILFORD?, and are you exposing the film for alternative process via "electronic" means?

Second, yesterday my Jobo came up with the message 'air diffuser fault - end manually', and again refused to work today. Do you have any experience with this fault?

Tom

PS) It seems you don't accept APUG private messages?

 

[Michael Kadillak]

Gaseous burst processing works like a champ and it has only one moving part - a solenoid valve. I talked to the manufacturer of these valves and they test them for over 100,000 cycles and they keep on going long after that. Nitrogen sure ain't going away anytime soon.

I am just looking at this as solving a fundamental business problem of developing film as effectively and efficiently as possible as for 40 + years this technique was the professional standard.

That said I was talking to the folks at DR5 here in Denver that has standardized on rotary processing. Talk to Dave Wood.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I have done both, last 14 years on rotary maybe 20 thousand runs, pretty well set in mind for rotary.
I did look into a dip dunk machine with nitrogen burst for large film and paper a couple of years back. Oversize tanks and lift systems, would work perfectly, but quoted 130k to make.

Gaseous burst processing is great if the burst is controlled from top to bottom for even density across grey fields.. This is in fact very hard to do on large tanks.

Gaseous burst processing works like a champ and it has only one moving part - a solenoid valve. I talked to the manufacturer of these valves and they test them for over 100,000 cycles and they keep on going long after that. Nitrogen sure ain't going away anytime soon.

I am just looking at this as solving a fundamental business problem of developing film as effectively and efficiently as possible as for 40 + years this technique was the professional standard.

That said I was talking to the folks at DR5 here in Denver that has standardized on rotary processing. Talk to Dave Wood.

 

[F80p]

130K!!!!!...ooops......but i guess it is justified because they wont be certainly mass producing it.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I thought it was a great idea, until they gave me the price.
I think this would take probably 20 - 40 years to pay off. I am not sure I will be around that long.

130K!!!!!...ooops......but i guess it is justified because they wont be certainly mass producing it.

 

[Kimberly Anderson]

Out of the five we have at school, 3 are still running. I had them all going at the same time yesterday. Keep us all posted as this is still fresh in many people's minds.

Dead Link Removed