Two Hell S3800 Scanners up for grabs

[Karl Hudson]

Hi everyone...I have a customer near San Diego (Cardiff-by-the-Sea), Headline Graphics, who is downsizing his operation and he's just offered me two S3800 scanners for free if I'll pick them up before the end of next week. I am working in SE Asia right now and won't be able to help save these beauties from the scrapyard. If anyone on this forum wants a high end drum scanner in great shape, I can hook you up with a local tech for lock down and you can arrange the lift gate. Here's your chance to invest a few hundred dollars and get the top of the line example from Scanning's heydays. Must act quickly. Please contact me directly by sending an email to karl@hudsongrafik.com if you are interested. Best regards, Karl

[Allen in Montreal]

Did anyone save one of these units?
i would love to hear the story how it turns out if anyone picked one up.

It would be sad to see it be land fill.

[Ron McElroy]

I hope they are saved as well. Where I work something broke on our 3900 and the owners decided to trash it instead of fixing the problem. I didn't have a place to put it:mad:

[Dave Jeffery]

I'm going to take a run at picking them up. Wish me luck!

Thanks for posting this Karl!!!!

[Peter De Smidt]

Good luck Dave!

[Dave Jeffery]

Too Late

Thanks again Karl!!

[don mills]

those 3900s are huge!

[Allen in Montreal]

Too Late

Thanks again Karl!!

They were junked or someone else got them before you?

[Dave Jeffery]

The gentleman that was kind enough to offer these for free sounded very busy when I called him so I did not waste any of his time asking questions. There was another person interested and Karl believed that there may have been arrangements made to have them scrapped so who knows?

They would have been a pain to move around though so I don't mind saving for a smaller scanner, unless of course some nice person reading this has one or two free Howteks, Azteks or ICG's that I can have :)

[IanMazursky]

No Azteks to give away (Mine) but i used to have a few 3300's, 3010's and a few other hell's.
They are basically a small tank and need special consideration when moving. You will need to procure the services of an old hell tech or at least someone with the knowledge.
Hell made a special set of wheels for the 3000 series. Most service techs have a few sets that you can rent. I would highly recommend it.
We did move one without a set once, not pretty and more damage then we would care to admit. It was a backup scanner though.

For those who haven't seen one, these have an open drum design. That is the drum is outside with no protection while its spinning.
I know why it is the way it is but its still dangerous. If you don't mount the drum correctly or you put your head to close, WHACK!.
Now i know someone will say that its not possible for the drum to come loose but it did happen, not at my shop but friends.
They had mounted the drum, turns out a sensor was bad and one of the locking clamps had a stress fracture that well fractured.
Not good and the drums can fly, but not far. The drums for the hell scanners are built very well, i think they said only a small crack but the film was fine.

Desktop scanner are much more safer, and weight less. No wheels needed, well except for the ICG's.
If anyone if considering a hell 3000 series, the 3900, 3800 and at worst the 3400 are the ones that can be attached to a mac IIRC.
The others have a shuttle drive system using these gigantic shuttle drives. A few of them can be modified using an old brusque to talk to a mac.
I never understood how, but it did work...most of the time.
We did love our Hells, nothing can beat them for scanning chromes fast. We could mount a well over a 100 35mm chromes on the large drum and zip its done scanning.
Negatives were always its downfall and when the industry tanked (thanks digital grrr), they had to go. I ended up with a Howtek 7500 and an Aztek Premier.
Still miss the 3300 everytime i have to scan a few hundred chromes.

[8x10 user]

How does the scan quality compare when doing chromes?

[IanMazursky]

Compare to each other or to other scanners?
Depends on the lenses in some of the hell scanners. Some were better (Zeiss lenses!) then others (standard).
It also depends on the mounting and the ability of the operator to color correct especially when you are scanning in CMYK as most of them did.
IIRC the 3400, 3800 and 3900 when connected to a mac could also scan in RGB but i never had any of those here.