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First let me state that if you are tired of reading about or posting about blix then there is no reason to read further into this thread. (In other words, don't waste your time and ours by reading the thread and then comment that you are tired of reading threads about blix.)
I have been studying the blix issue/controversy, and I think I have come to some tentative conclusions. First, blix is bad. Second, blix is OK. Both are true.
How can this be? Here's my theory based on what I have read. I'm framing this as a series of statements, interspersed with a question or two. I'm trying to summarize what I think I have learned. Don't take these statements as statements of iron clad truth, but more along the lines as propositions that may or may not be true.
Blix is unstable and does not keep well after being mixed and degrades fairly rapidly with use.
A well-formulated blix can work fine if it is a good formulation. However, it should not be re-used very many times and should not held over for very long. In fact, it should preferably be freshly mixed and used immediately in single-shot mode. (Granted, this could be expensive.)
Some blix-based products are better than others.
Given these "facts", commercially available blix products are not suitable for high volume laboratories because those laboratories are not set up to use freshly made blix, partly because it does not fit into their established SOPs (which are based on solution re-use and/or replenishment) and partly because of the cost of blix relative to separate bleach and fix methods.
Running the blix processing time a little longer than specified generally won't hurt and might help in clearing the silver and silver halide from the film, with clearing the silver halide being the more serious issue. (I am basing this on a comment made by photo engineer in a ten year old thread.)
This last point raises the following question: If a small automated processing machine (such as a Phototherm or certain Jobo models) is set up to use separate bleach and fix, could one just load blix in place of both the bleach and fix solutions? This would end up blixing the film twice. I presume one could save a little on the consumable cost if the second blix stage is fresh and the first blix is a once-used solution saved from the previous processing batch, assuming the previous batch was run on the same day and only used once previously. In this context one could think of the first blix step as a rough-blix, and the second blix step as a polishing-blix.
If not used properly or if an inferior blix is used then using blix can potentially result in poor quality of the processed film because of incomplete removal of silver and/or silver halide. However, this does not affect the stability of the processed film.
I think I had some more thoughts, but they escape me for the moment, so I'll close this post for now.
I have been studying the blix issue/controversy, and I think I have come to some tentative conclusions. First, blix is bad. Second, blix is OK. Both are true.
How can this be? Here's my theory based on what I have read. I'm framing this as a series of statements, interspersed with a question or two. I'm trying to summarize what I think I have learned. Don't take these statements as statements of iron clad truth, but more along the lines as propositions that may or may not be true.
Blix is unstable and does not keep well after being mixed and degrades fairly rapidly with use.
A well-formulated blix can work fine if it is a good formulation. However, it should not be re-used very many times and should not held over for very long. In fact, it should preferably be freshly mixed and used immediately in single-shot mode. (Granted, this could be expensive.)
Some blix-based products are better than others.
Given these "facts", commercially available blix products are not suitable for high volume laboratories because those laboratories are not set up to use freshly made blix, partly because it does not fit into their established SOPs (which are based on solution re-use and/or replenishment) and partly because of the cost of blix relative to separate bleach and fix methods.
Running the blix processing time a little longer than specified generally won't hurt and might help in clearing the silver and silver halide from the film, with clearing the silver halide being the more serious issue. (I am basing this on a comment made by photo engineer in a ten year old thread.)
This last point raises the following question: If a small automated processing machine (such as a Phototherm or certain Jobo models) is set up to use separate bleach and fix, could one just load blix in place of both the bleach and fix solutions? This would end up blixing the film twice. I presume one could save a little on the consumable cost if the second blix stage is fresh and the first blix is a once-used solution saved from the previous processing batch, assuming the previous batch was run on the same day and only used once previously. In this context one could think of the first blix step as a rough-blix, and the second blix step as a polishing-blix.
If not used properly or if an inferior blix is used then using blix can potentially result in poor quality of the processed film because of incomplete removal of silver and/or silver halide. However, this does not affect the stability of the processed film.
I think I had some more thoughts, but they escape me for the moment, so I'll close this post for now.
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! If you would contact manufacturers why they do not
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