Rotary print washer - new to me!

[Dave Gustafson]

Anyone have experience with a rotary print washer? A friend gave me his and I tried it for the first time tonight. It’s kind of mesmerizing watching the prints circling!

 

[Milpool]

Anyone have experience with a rotary print washer? A friend gave me his and I tried it for the first time tonight. It’s kind of mesmerizing watching the prints circling!
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I hadn’t seen that particular type/brand before but Sebastian/California Stainless makes circular washers that work on a similar principle. https://www.sebastiandarkroomprod.com/print_washers.php

 

[AnselMortensen]

I have a similar one, but without the rotating tray.
Getting the prints to float around in a circle without sticking together requires precise aiming of the one water jet.

 

[mshchem]

Fiber base paper works in these. Be careful of too cold water, here cold water from the tap rarely gets above 50°F. I always wanted to put a pump one of these. Run it for 10 minutes, dump and refill .

Really pretty cool. I seem to recall one of these used glass marbles as a ball bearing ?

 

[MattKing]

I got most use of one of those while working as a darkroom technician in a large newspaper darkroom in the late 1970s.
The setup was really intriguing. It was positioned under a chute that served as a light trap as well.
The prints were fixed under safelight and then dropped into the chute which discharged them into the washer below, which was in a lighted room
The entire process was oriented for speed - deadlines needed to be met - and I both had to make prints for photographers who weren't there to do their own as well as help the photographers who were printing their work move their completed prints though the wash and dry states quickly.
It was a great job!

 

[Carnie Bob]

We use a calumet stainless steel print washer similar to this at photo school 1974 era, it is good for general washing but I would not consider it an archival washer, if you are doing quick rc contacts and tests its perfect.

 

[Randy Stewart]

Back in the 1960s ad 70s, some version of these were very common in small use situations like schools, although most not as fancy (no rotating tray). The spray spins the prints around in a circular path to keep them in motion and not sticking together, while water is slowly exchanged to remove hypo soaking out of the fiber-based prints. IMO at the time, they were fairly useless in practice, as you had to get a very exact amount of spray to keep the prints from sticking together and blocking hypo from leaching out of the paper, while keeping the print moving to insure adequate agitation. When resin-coated paper becoming dominant in the 1970s, wash times went from 60 to 5 minutes, so long term wash systems like these largely vanished. Serious fiber paper users shifted to slot washers or tray siphons, etc., which do a much better job anyway, washing each print separately.