Thats It

[Photographis]

Last post for a week.

Just finished cleaning down, setting the alarm, tuning the lights off, I'm on holiday.

Have fun Guys 'n' Gals.

[NeilT]

Have a good un  

[Colopt]

Have fun. I'm thinking of going on a permanent holiday soon.  ;D

[nash]

Hi All

i also need to shutdown for seven days.

i have a fuji frontier 350 and a film processor FP230B would the chemistry be okay for that period of time

any advise would be appreciated

[Colopt]

I have shutdown my machines for a week & the chemistry was still O.K. I drained it out and stored in sealed containers.

Probably a good time to clean everything &  mix new chemistry though.

[kioskguy]

Would love to take off for a week but my customers may not come back  :-/ Good to see it is still possible.

In terms of the shutdown the only chemistry that may be borderline is the film developer. I looked at the reccomendations and that suggests a week only, all other chemistries will last between 3 and 6 weeks in the machine or rep tanks. Make sure you go back in the night before and clean racks, check timers etc. Machines seem to like continuity and unfortunately after shutdowns you invariably find issues.

[Liz]

So.welcome back.  Where's your holiday snaps

[Photographis]

HAH! got lots of shots of water, unfortunately falling from the sky! When they have been dev'd I'll send you a couple of scans. If I can get round to it. Playing catchup now, here 'till 10.30 last night, in at 7.30 today, as it is still pouring down (therefore no customers) I'm having a coffee break.

As for the machines/chemistry, the printer was cleaned right down, fresh stabiliser in the tanks, dev & bleach were stored. All tanked up and running like a train. Film processors, Hmm, cleaned the racks, left alone otherwise, as had a full clean not too long ago. Did 75 35mm + 13 120's on monday, no problems.

[nash]

Hi Photogaraphis

i hope you`ve had a good holiday,

i also plan to shutdown for  7 days

i`ve been advised to shutdown the machines by the mains and leave the machine well ventilated and top up with water unreturn, but i see that you stored your bleach and dev in sealed containers is this necessary.

Advise would be appreciated

[Photographis]

Hi Nash, thanks, had a good break.

No, for seven days I don't recon it is necessary, it was me being lazy. When I drained the tanks for cleaning I had discarded the first couple of litres because of sludge. After cleaning I could have re-tanked and things would have probably been fine. but I just couldn't be bothered to mix up, so I left them in the barells.

  Mind you, when I was re-tanking, an awfull lot more sludge had dropped out, so I discarded still more. That took me over my couple of litres of dev (about 3.5) so I gave it a little starter. I did have quite a lot of work waiting on my return, so once it was up and running, I hammered through 1500 6x4's. That got everything working again.

The problem with these chemicals is that they oxidise, so it is allways best to store airtight. Seven days should be ok, depends on the state of your chemicals at the time. After seeing how much sludge dropped out of my 'clean' dev & bleach, I certainly wouldn't let it settle in the tanks, once those circulation pumps get going on re-start it's going to be all over the prints.

Don't forget to make a system backup, as someone pointed out, these machines are not made to be turned off, and sometimes don't like it. I was lucky, but had instructed the shop 'minder' not to promise anything before Friday, just in case (a bad case could take a couple of days to get back up).

Have a good break, you've earned it!!