Results 1 to 6 of 6

Thread: Ascorlight 444

  1. #1
    SpeedGraphicMan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    Los Angeles
    Posts
    308

    Ascorlight 444

    Hello all!
    For fun, I picked up an old Ascorlight 444 unit.
    Anybody out there that can give me some info about the unit? What voltage battery it took etc?
    "I would like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia will do..."

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Posts
    332

    Re: Ascorlight 444

    I briefly owned one back in the late 1970's. As I recall, the battery is 6 volts. It was several Ni-Cad's in a rectangular plastic housing. As I recall, it's a 200 watt second output.

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Posts
    1

    Re: Ascorlight 444

    Quote Originally Posted by SpeedGraphicMan View Post
    Hello all!
    For fun, I picked up an old Ascorlight 444 unit.
    Anybody out there that can give me some info about the unit? What voltage battery it took etc?
    I was a young engineer working on the project for Berkey Technical Corp. Berkey bought many smaller photographic manufacturing companies including the American Speedlight Corp in NYC. Berkey Tech was located in Queens County NYC.

    The 444 used 4 nickel cadmium F cells wired in series. The cells were placed in a rectangular removable plastic case. The case itself was sealed. The circuit used to charge the capacitors in the unit to 475VDC was a chopped transformer coupled fly-back inverter. The circuits had all solid state transistors. The unit had a low recycle time primarily because the nicads could supply a very large peak current. There was an auto-cutoff sensor to turn off the inverter when power reached full charge. The trigger circuit excited an silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) which provided the path to discharge the capacitors through the xenon flash tube. Our chief engineer was a very bight person who studied under Dr. Harold Edgerton, (the inventor of the electronic flash) at M.I.T.

  4. #4

    Join Date
    Sep 1998
    Location
    Loganville , GA
    Posts
    14,409

    Re: Ascorlight 444

    Lucky me! I was one of the test studios way back when for the 444 and it was a neat unit. Unfortunately it also required a lot of service calls, at least the 3 or 4 units I had. Almost every month I would bundle them up, along with a couple from other studios near me, and drive them out to Berkey for service. But when they worked they were very good.

    Negatives about the design were non-UV coated flash tubes so things could change color and some flash duration problems.

  5. #5

    Join Date
    Jul 2019
    Location
    California
    Posts
    5

    Re: Ascorlight 444

    Hello, Berkey Fellow;
    I was just given most of an Ascorlight-444 from the estate of an old friend, Larry Sanchez, who had passed 23 years ago; they just got those photog items from storage, and this was among the items not broken in shipping, stolen by caretaker, or donated to a school for tax reasons. I can't test it, unfortunately, for the battery charger was no longer with it. Is the circuit for the charger available? I used to make my own power supplies back in the tube and linear transistor amplifiers days, and suspect that I could make one if I can't find a really cheap working one to test this unit and see if I can use it with the Linhof 4X5 also from Larry. My other 4X5 is a B&J press. Any leads, ideas? Thanks in advance, if you can.
    Paul

  6. #6

    Join Date
    Sep 1998
    Location
    Loganville , GA
    Posts
    14,409

    Re: Ascorlight 444

    Quote Originally Posted by onecumulo View Post
    Hello, Berkey Fellow;
    I was just given most of an Ascorlight-444 from the estate of an old friend, Larry Sanchez, who had passed 23 years ago; they just got those photog items from storage, and this was among the items not broken in shipping, stolen by caretaker, or donated to a school for tax reasons. I can't test it, unfortunately, for the battery charger was no longer with it. Is the circuit for the charger available? I used to make my own power supplies back in the tube and linear transistor amplifiers days, and suspect that I could make one if I can't find a really cheap working one to test this unit and see if I can use it with the Linhof 4X5 also from Larry. My other 4X5 is a B&J press. Any leads, ideas? Thanks in advance, if you can.
    Paul
    If you can find the circuit or the charger you will probably find that the caps are no longer good after all those years of non use.

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •