Power Supply for Durst 401 MkII head?

[Chris Lange]

Hi all,

I just recently came into posession of a Durst Laborator 1000 with the 401 MkII color head (the updated version of the Pavelle 401), yet it came without the transformer/power supply. Is there anyone who has a spare, or one they are getting rid of? Or are there other possibilities to resurrect the enlarger short of buying another head for it? I'm a college student, and got the enlarger for a scant $25, and mechanically it's in essentially mint condition...

 

[Mike Wilde]

I'm not up on the Durst heads, but I'm an electrical engineer. I'd bet that the bulb is a low voltage tungsten , maybe halgen. Likely 12V or 27V or something in that range is needed, and stabilized here is best. If it is anything like my Omega, there is likely a line voltage fan, either 120V, or, since Durst is Italian, I believe, it may be 220V. There may also be 120/22V panel lights to show the settings of the dichric filter settings.

Good luck, hope this helps. Do not be afraid of taking 'the hood off' and looking inside for bulb type, which will guide you on that voltage, and any markings on the fan, or other bulbs if they are present.

 

[ic-racer]

As Mike said. I think it is a 200w 24v bulb.

A replacement transormer something like this may work:
Dead Link Removed

 

[Chris Lange]

Good to know, but the plug is also proprietary, it's a 4 pronged plug with a ground in the center, so I'm not sure what to do with that. I've heard that 120v bulbs also work fine and will have a longer life. It does take a halogen (two to be precise) and has a cooling fan that apparently needs to turn on in order for the bulbs to light as a failsafe.

Thanks for the advice so far guys!

 

[ic-racer]

Good to know, but the plug is also proprietary, it's a 4 pronged plug with a ground in the center, so I'm not sure what to do with that. I've heard that 120v bulbs also work fine and will have a longer life. It does take a halogen (two to be precise) and has a cooling fan that apparently needs to turn on in order for the bulbs to light as a failsafe.

Thanks for the advice so far guys!

From what I recall the pins on the 120V MR-16 shaped lamps are shaped different than the low voltage lamps. So, if you go with a 120v lamp (not a bad idea) you will also need a new socket (not a bad idea to change sockets occasionally anyway).

 

[bdial]

My LPL takes an MR-16 type lamp and the standard pins are flat, but I've had bulbs that had round pins too, the socket in mine takes both.

The way I solved the no power supply problem for a Durst 1200 I set for VCP was to take a Chromega power supply we had with with an otherwise broken Chromega and connect it to the durst by grafting the connector from the dead enlarger onto the Durst's cord, after decyphering the power supply's pinout.
In the case of our 1200 there are only two conductors going to the head, so the fan is apparently fed from the same circuit as the lamp, at 24 V.

For your 401, you may need to do some wire tracing to determine what goes where. For example, my LPL's fan is line voltage, and the lamp runs from the 82 v power supply with 4 wires going to the head from the power supply.
The bulb type will tell you what voltage it needs (once you look it up on one of the bulb supplier sites). The fan, hopefully, will have a label on it identifying what it needs to run on, or else, a manufacturer and part number you can google.

 

[quine666]

I'm using a 7.5 amp variac (variable transformer) with my Pavelle 401. I rewired the cord from the head to a standard 3-prong type to fit in the socket of the variac. The rewiring job wasn't particularly difficult -- the old cord was pretty shot anyway. One thing to watch out for is that if you set the output of the variac too high, you'll blow the bulb(!) Variacs are readily available on e*y...

BTW, one additional benefit of the variac is that you can vary the light output without moving the f-stop off of its optimal setting. This also works with incandescent bulbs, but there could also be a color shift that will affect VC papers.

Cheers,

-andrew