Film coating machine (homemade) on Flickr

[Photo Engineer]

Dear all;

Let us say that you build a narrow coating machine from scratch such as depicted in the OP. It would run you about $10,000, as a guess. Now, turn it on and coat and you get - nothing but a mess. Why? It takes knowledge, so you go to someone who can make emulsions and coat for you (and this may require 2 people, one for each task) and he (they) charge(s) $200 / hour to coat things and you have to buy $5000 worth of chemicals and gelatin. Why? It takes years to learn how to do these things and then at least a year bringing the machine to life using test coatings and this costs a lot of money for silver nitrate and other chemicals again.

And, of course, you have to buy a roll of film support, and you can't just get one. You also need finishing and packing to be done by you or for you.

In the end, this custom film is going to cost a lot of money and I am not being sterotyped or disdainful of your comments it is simply that most of you do not understand the difficulty of doing it. Now, if on the other hand you think I am wrong and it will not cost much or be hard, I simply challenge you to do it or find someone who will do it for you in the price range you predict.

PE

[David A. Goldfarb]

And as I recall, didn't the rollers in the machine come from a decommissioned Kodak research machine, solving one significant design issue?

[Photo Engineer]

They may have, IDK. The design is simple enough as long as you have the money to pay for their manufacture. But yes, a decommissioned Kodak machine could supply much of that equipment. The coating hopper is based on the small research machine I used and the overall design looks just like our SC4 (Sample Coater #4) machine in B-59 at Kodak. The only difference is that the machine depicted is a loop machine but the Kodak machine was point to point.

PE

[dwross]

I've spent the last five minutes trying to think of all the aphorisms, metaphors, banalities and profundities I can think of to go along with this 'just-for-fun' link. I'll suffice to say never underestimate ingenuity and love of craft.

http://www.instructables.com/forum/W...n-vacuum-tube/

[David A. Goldfarb]

I've spent the last five minutes trying to think of all the aphorisms, metaphors, banalities and profundities I can think of to go along with this 'just-for-fun' link. I'll suffice to say never underestimate ingenuity and love of craft.

http://www.instructables.com/forum/W...n-vacuum-tube/

That's brilliant, Denise.

[Photo Engineer]

Denise;

Did you notice the use of some very specialized equipment and techniques? How much do you think one of those handmade vacuum tubes would cost? How much would buying all of the equipment cost? That spot welder is going to cost a bit and learning glassblowing is not trivial. I took a course in graduate school.

PE

[sanking]

In the end, this custom film is going to cost a lot of money and I am not being sterotyped or disdainful of your comments it is simply that most of you do not understand the difficulty of doing it. Now, if on the other hand you think I am wrong and it will not cost much or be hard, I simply challenge you to do it or find someone who will do it for you in the price range you predict.

PE

I agree with PE in that the use of a coating machine is a very complicated matter that is as much art an intuition as science. I recently spent a few days trying to coat carbon tissue with a coating machine that has a known history of use in a parallel application. My experience with the machine convininced me that it would eventually work but would requires dozens of itermations to get it right. In the end I decided that the method of coating carbon tissue I have described at various sites, which does not involve a machine, works just as well, if not better.

Sandy King

[dwross]

Ron,

No one is saying cheap or easy. We're saying 'love of craft' - again, you may tend to underestimate the power of that in some people.

Also, don't underestimate the winds of change. We may be on the brink of a return to the craftsperson-driven cottage industry. Increasingly, corporations are leaving both their customers and their employees high and dry. Entrepreneurialship and self-employment with a more local twist may be an attractive alternative to a lot of people, even if (and maybe especially if) the entry is a challenge.

My two cents,
d

[David A. Goldfarb]

How much do you think one of those handmade vacuum tubes would cost?

Certainly more than new tubes made in Russia, China, or Yugoslavia, but possibly less than new-old-stock American and German tubes. Prices can be found at--

http://thetubestore.com/

http://tubedepot.com/index.html

Here are some of the rare ones--

http://tubedepot.com/ranosautu.html

I learned this while stocking up on replacement tubes for our Hammond organ.

[Aurum]

I've seen that Video before from a link on the Glowbugs mailing list (Amateur Radio list specialising in Valve (Vacuum tube) technology)

The guy has a webpage that goes into a lot more detail than just the video. The man is a true craftsman in all senses of the word.

The valves he is recreating are not typically commercially available either as N.O.S. or Chinese or Russian copies. Those types of valves are typically the ones from the second world war onwards when the electronics industry really took off.

He is recreating stuff for equipment from the turn of the last century, for the really early radios that emerged before the first world war, and were superceded in the early 30's

Like PE I've also done glassblowing as part of Graduate chemistry training.
I'm just about adequate. When I worked in the Pharma industry we had a glassblower on site, repairing equipment and fabricating custom stuff. Thats an art all to itself, and one I call myself fortunate to have seen in action