My wind tunnel is good for 4 strips of 120 if I space them properly and have clips to weigh them down.
Sometimes I put the fancy looking HP Combitank innards right in there, but singles go alone.
My wind tunnel is good for 4 strips of 120 if I space them properly and have clips to weigh them down.
Sometimes I put the fancy looking HP Combitank innards right in there, but singles go alone.
I just hang my negatives in a free-standing garment storage unit. No heat, no dust but it takes quite a while to dry that way- usually overnight.
See if you can get a different fan for your unit. If it is a 12V fan, then you might be able to replace it with a low-speed Panaflow fan.
A speed control for a router would work..Harbor Freight Tools.
or perhaps an air filter(automotive) between the fan & film?
This has been an interesting post, as I have a California Steel drying cabinet that is a work of art...BUT...with the blower on, I need to keep good separation between negatives or they will stick together and I will blow up. So I understand the issue of too much hot air. What I DON'T understand is why hot air is considered manly. In my experience hot air generally comes from other directions.
I think we have the same drying cabinet. I have the Deluxe Drying Cabinet by California Stainless Mfg. Have you tried partially blocking the inlet to reduce the air flow?Originally Posted by Michael Graves
By blocking the inlet, the motor may overheat & die. A cooling fan from a computer may work it's 5V.
Blocking the inlet will only kill the motor if it is overloaded and relying on the airflow for cooling.
Reducing the airflow without decreasing the heat input will raise the temperature of the air leaving the heaters, and possibly burn them out prematurely. This is true even if there is a thermostat to control the average temperature in the cabinet. Without a thermostat, you are really asking for trouble.
If there are two independent heaters, you may be able to wire them in series rather than in parallel; this will drop the heater power by a factor of four, allowing you to decrease the airflow by that amount with no risk. Alternatively, wiring a dimmer control into the heater circuit will let you drop the power gracefully.
But don't try to run the motor on reduced voltage unless you really understand what you are doing; not all motor types take kindly to this.
I am just surprised so many are using film drying cabinets. (I am not being critical, just surprised.) I have a couple of those retractable (hotel bathroom style) clothes lines on a darkroom wall. I pull them out and put the negatives on there with clothes pins. It takes about an hour for them to dry. Dust is not a problem if I turn on the HEPA filter when I start developing the film.
The last time I used a cabinet was on the school paper, and then only when I had a very short deadline.
To elaborate. In 1973 I got the Fred Picker book and he said not to use heat for negatives. Right or wrong, since then I just air dried with no problem. Below is my current setup. Of note I have a controlled 50% environment that I monitor with a sling psychrometer.
The control strips are short pieces of film exposed to a step wedge. I'm usually anxious to get them on the densitometer right away so I use a blow drier. (the slope of the curve determines my development time) The emulsion surface frequently looks mottled in reflection, but it doesn't seem to affect the results. Thought I'd not want my good negatives to look like that.
In my own opinion a proper drying area is so important, when I built this current darkroom, I did not process any film until the drying cabinet was in place.
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