Film coating machine (homemade) on Flickr

[Dark Orange]

There have been a couple of questions off-list that I will address here in the public area along with the other questions.

By the looks of things, many here may not be familiar with the workings of my image hosting site. I link to the image pages rather than the images themselves, which means you can get larger images by clicking on the little magnifying glass above the image and choosing the image size you want. This allows finer details (if any) to be read.

On my next visit, I shall attempt to document the emulsion manufacturing technique and equipment involved. While the builder has a top quality lab built for the task, with all the flasks and glass tubes and stuff, he is building special reaction chambers that sounds like it would be of interest to many of the posters and lurkers here. I'll put it in a new thread obviously.

I am not sure the bubble-trap and filter have actually been used yet. As for the bubble-trap, it is a simple chamber - emulsion/bubbles flow in, bubbles rise in the chamber, emulsion flows out. The screw in the top allows release of the air if too much accumulates. I'll make the assumption that they would go between the pump and the coating head, but shall get confirmation on that.

Finally, I wish to take this moment to thank Photo Engineer for filling in the details that I do not know. He is definately an asset to this forum.

PS. Did nobody notice the Kodachrome statement I made earlier?

[Photo Engineer]

I read it, and I know the problems having worked on it a very little bit.

PE

[Dark Orange]

All problems are surmountable if you try hard enough.

[tim_walls]

PS. Did nobody notice the Kodachrome statement I made earlier?

I read it, and cool though it sounds, I must confess I sort of wondered "why?"

I mean, making your own reversal process sounds very cool, but why would you base it on Kodachrome style technology other than, say, E6? Kodachrome seems colossally complicated.

Or is a Kodachrome type emulsion actually easier to homebrew?

If it's some particular image characteristic of Kodachrome you were after (e.g. colour balance say,) is there no way of trying to reproduce that characteristic but using an E6 type approach?


Of course, I accept as a perfectly valid answer to the "why?" question "because he can." That's the best reason going as far as I'm concerned

[Dark Orange]

Of course, I accept as a perfectly valid answer to the "why?" question "because he can." That's the best reason going as far as I'm concerned

That's the whole reason behind the existance of this forum, innit?

[PHOTOTONE]

I don't think KODACHROME as an emulsion would be considered more difficult than E-6 emulsions to "make", rather the difficulty is in the processing, and the many more tightly controlled steps needed to successfully process it. Isn't Kodachrome actually three b/w emulsions (with carefully controlled characteristics) with filter layers in-between?

[dmr]

PS. Did nobody notice the Kodachrome statement I made earlier?

Yes, I did.

Although I will probably never coat film (my times in a wet darkroom can be counted easily on your fingers) I find threads like this fascinating.

What impresses me is that while many attempts to coat film or paper seem to result in so-so quality at best, this magic machine seems to be at least an attempt to get a reasonable degree of quality and consistency.

Even before you mentioned Kodachrome, when I saw the remarks about different layers being coated, I thought "Color, maybe?"

What impressed me most about this thread and this magic machine is that maybe a few companies whose business is dwindling don't have the strangle-hold on film use that we think they have!

[Photo Engineer]

Kodachrome will require at least 9 emulsions and 6 layers to be coated. It will need either rem-jet on the back or AH under the emulsion layers. It is not a trivial task and will have to be built in groups of layers to get it right.

Good luck.

PE

[Gatsby1923]

WOW I love this thread! I have been following it from day one. I almost want to build my own. I don’t have the know how but still this is a fun thread.

Dave M

[Photo Engineer]

Hey, I would park my car in the driveway and put this in the garage just to have one. But, since I cannot, I'm doing the best to do it in a way that everyone can use.

But I sure do miss the coating machines. Quality is so much better.

PE