Phototherm Super Sidekick 8R Draining Problem

[Kief Chief]

I have a Phototherm SSK8 that I mainly process black and white film with.

The Problem:

When it's draining developer, fixer, or hypo clear, I get a warning that it's not able to drain and I need to do it manually.

But when I go to dump it myself, no chemistry comes out of the cylinder . So it actually is draining.

I ran a test yesterday with the lid off just to confirm this and it is in fact draining all the way.

I've checked the dump lines. Theres no kinks or any visible problem that I can see with them.

I've opened it up and taken a look inside and see no visible obvious problems either.

I don't know if this has an affect on it, but I'm using Xtol made with Distilled Water and then mixed to a working solution of 1:1

Im doing this to avoid the possible "sudden death" issue that could happen with xtol.

but I've also just done a test run with all tap water and it still gave me the same problem with those same steps.



Please, any tips or tricks to resolve this issue??

 

[koraks]

Welcome to Photrio!

Sounds like a sensor problem. If this were my machine, I'd start dismantling it to figure out how the drain-sensing works and then troubleshoot from there.