Found an Automega E-5 Autofocus enlarger body

[tomwilliams]

I'm hoping for some input on another issue that's come up on my Automega E-5 restoration project. I'm working on fixing the concavity in the plate that holds the upper bellows frame and also acts as the negative carrier receiver. The concavity introduces a light-leaking gap between the receiver plate and the negative carrier. That seems fixable - I see it as a stress-related condition, not a design 'feature'.

But I'm not sure about the negative carriers themselves. The carriers are made of a thin and a thick aluminum plate that I think should lay flat on one another, but in the cases of the 3 carriers I've obtained (from different sources but all in apparently very good condition), all three leak light betwen the carrier plates. Is this a problem encountered by other owners of E-series enlargers? The light leak is substantial when no negative is in place, and much diminished but still present when a negative is in place.

[ic-racer]

i have never encountered an enlarger that did not leak light!
For example Omega's D5500 most advanced enlarger they ever made... leaks light around the negative carrier. i made some little curtains to contain the stray light.

[tomwilliams]

i have never encountered an enlarger that did not leak light!
For example Omega's D5500 most advanced enlarger they ever made... leaks light around the negative carrier. i made some little curtains to contain the stray light.

Good to know - thanks. I've owned only one enlarger before acquiring this E-5, and it leaked light profusely when I bought it third-hand. I resorted to draping a curtain over the light-emitting area then. The E-5 is better than that.

[tomwilliams]

As my Automega E-5 5x7 enlarger project winds down, I thought I'd give a synopsis of the project, and thank some of the folks who helped keep it going. I'll also indicate some of the materials and sources I used, in the event someone might find it useful. A couple of photos of the enlarger now:



In earlier posts to this thread I've mentioned my initial troubles removing the old paint from the lamphouse interior. The upper half of the lamphouse is made of steel, the lower half of aluminum. I didn't fully appreciate the consequences of this difference before charging ahead with the old paint removal. I resorted to sandblasting, which removed the paint but caused the flat bottom of the (aluminum) lamphouse bottom section to warp.

I tried to clamp the distortions out, using bar clamps and several flat wooden disks matched to the flat bottom, inside and out. I kept the clamps on for about a week, tightening the clamps daily. That did reduce the warpage. I then tried (gently) pounding the remaining irregularities out using wooden disks as support inside the unit, and a 1" thick, 12" long straight steel bar across the deformed bottom (less barbaric than it sounds). That seemed to settle the issue.

3M Black Super Weatherstrip and Gasket Adhesive - a contact cement - worked well to attach a 5/16" thick gum rubber mat from McMaster-Carr (Wear-Resistant Natural Gum Foam Sheet 5/16" Thk, 36" Wd, Ultra Soft, 1 ft. Length, #8601K44) to the flat bottom surface of the lamphouse. I didn't get the mat on perfectly though, so I made a circle-cutting jig that fit snugly inside the 5x7 hole in the bottom of the lamphouse half. The result was a tidy circular mat that centered well on the circular lamphouse bottom. The mat had just the right amount of squishiness for the omegalite head.

Although the remedy for the deformation of the bottom half of the lamphouse seemed pretty good at the time, 7 weeks down the road some of the deformation had returned - enough so that the new gum rubber mat no longer made a light-proof seal with the top of the negative carrier. I decided to trim the rubber mat, rather than tearing it off the lamphouse and trying some other fix on the distortion of the lamphouse floor.

To that end, I built a "router sledge" that allowed me to maneuver a router bit along the width and length of the mat, at a constant height. Of course I cobbled together a test piece before tackling the lamphouse: first attempt = shredded mat scrap. Bye-and-bye I figured it out and ultimately flattened the mat using the router sledge. I carefully sharpened the router bit beforehand, and as a result got a good finish on the mat. Fingers crossed that the stresses in the lamphouse have equilibrated.

The interior of the lamphouse is now a bright flat white. The attached photo doesn't quite do the whiteness justice. Finding an flat white aerosol in a quality paint took a bit of doing. After investigating the spray primers and paints available at the local big box stores,I wasn't convinced that they would deliver what I wanted: flat finish; high reflectivity; very good adhesion; resistence to crackling/peeling from temperature variations; mated with a high-build primer. Ultimately, my choices were an SEM high-build aerosol primer (16 Ounce Gray Primer/Surfacer #42013) and a compatible flat white paint: Dupli-Color DA1672 12 oz. Flat White Aerosol Premium Enamel.



The rest of the enlarger restoration was pretty simple by comparison. I stripped it down completely, removed rust and oxidation on parts I didn't plan to replace, and sanded most aluminum parts with 600 grit sandpaper to restore their sheen. Most of the screws, washers and nuts needed cleaning or replacement, and as they were mostly standard #8x32 or #8x24, replacement was easy. The wire wheel on my dremel made short work of most rust on those parts that I didn't replace. There was a fair amount of congealed/hardened lubricant in a few spots (along the rail guides mostly), easily removed. I elected not to replace that lubricant, as the rails move freely through the guides. I used a hard wax on the rotating pins.

The enlarger had no base board or base clamp initially. The local Habitat for Humanity ReStore contributed a $5 formica-covered board, size and condition nearly perfect. The entirely adequate base clamp system came together using 1/4-20 bolts, weld tabs, and some washers and nuts, for under $20. Photo attached. The OEM part was available, but at an exorbitant price. Most of the remaining missing parts would be more expensive, or take a lot more effort to jimmy.



There were five or six tiny pinholes in the bellows (which were probably without effect), easily patched with Permatex Ultra Black Gasket Maker. The bellows detaches from the upper aluminum frame (which acts as the receptacle for the negative carrier as well) easily via 8 tiny screws, almost no fuss at all. Otherwise the bellows is in good shape.

[tomwilliams]

The enlarger came with a 101mm f4.5 Wollensack Raptar and matching cone and rail. The lens is not in good shape, also not of great repute. Word on the street is that the Wollensack Raptars and Kodak Ektanons are of uneven quality, and that it's a bit of a crap shoot to buy one. I replaced the Wollensack 101mm with a nice looking Vivitar VHE 100mm f5.6, knowing that the autofocus function could be slightly compromised, and if so the effect might be remedied by a bit of rail shimming.

There was another rail with the enlarger, apparently for a 162mm lens. As I had a very nice 150mm f5.6 Rodagon, and on account of the uncertainty in finding a good Wollensack or Ektanon 162mm lens, I elected to let the 162mm rail idle. KHB to the rescue: they had OEM rails and cones suitable for a 150mm lens, in stock. KHBPhotografix has been a life saver for OEM parts for this project. Glennview.com is another resource. Both are understandably expensive, given that the E-5 went out of production in 1973. I find using OEM parts satisfying when they're good, but many times the satisfaction in using OEM parts is outweighed by cost. Plus, executing a DIY part well has its own satisfaction. But fabricating a rail for a 150mm lens was not on.

Negative carriers - none came with the enlarger. My first look at their availability and cost made me think this was one area I might have to jimmy. Another forum user suggested masked glass carriers as an OEM alternative, and showed an example. I figured I'd buy one OEM part, and model others off that, in masked glass. So I bought one OEM 4x5 negative carrier from KHB. But on a lark, I made an insultingly low offer on an overpriced glass negative carrier on ebay - and it was accepted. At the same time, a 35mm carrier appeared on ebay for only $27. Together, the two auction-sourced carriers cost 1/2 that of the 4x5 carrier. Any future carrier will probably be masked glass.

The lamphouse came with an intact FC12T10 circline bulb (32 watts, rated at 4500K, soft white, no longer available but the FC12T9 is a workable stand-in), but no ballast. Replacing that with a current, appropriately sized ballast (Sunlite 40110-SU 120v 60Hz) was fairly trivial. The OEM lamphouse-to-ballast cable has Cinch Jones 4-pin connectors, and the mating receptacle is not available at your local hardware store. It is available - expensively - on auction sites. That, with a ground wire, a 120v 25A 3-prong power plug, and the ballast, fill up a 2.5"x 6"x 4" electronics box that sits tidily on the back of the base board.

After adding a well made and cost effective 3.5"x3.5" under-the-lens filter holder fabricated by bitbybitphoto, the enlarger is now operational. The only bits not currently up to snuff are the elevation gears, each of which has one broken tooth. The broken teeth were aligned, resulting in a skip in the movement of the head. I rotated one gear 180 degrees, so there is no longer a skip, and added two OEM tensioners to the top of the columns. The tensioners relieve almost all the weight from the gears, so that situation is not actively hampering the enlarger's utility. A longer term solution in the form of 3d printed gears, or a 3d printed form for a cast gear, seems plausible. I did check out a few online sources for off-the-shelf gear replacements (no go) and for custom gear fabrication (ridiculously expensive).

The project cost to date is about $1100 in parts and services, with about 40% of that cost going to KHB for OEM parts, and 30% to ebay vendors for OEM parts, supplies and miscellaneous parts.

The enlarger is now ready for my bathroom darkroom ... as soon as I reverse the bathroom door & frame so that the door opens outward. The enlarger is surprisingly light, and for now at least I can pick it up and walk it into the darkroom. When the prices of building materials come back down from the stratosphere, I'll return to my fantasy of building a darkroom outside, next to the house, where the enlarger can sit in a dedicated space.

Many thanks to forum members who have chimed in on this thread. In particular, Chauncey Walden, Daniel Unkefer, and Seadiver5 spent a fair amount of constructive time on the thread. I hope jnantz reads this, as his encouragement was helpful.