Vacuum Frame Question

[MCohn]

I’m in the market for a vacuum frame, and looking online I came across these: https://www.dennis-ramos.com/portable-vacuum-frame. Does anyone know anything about them? Are they any good? The price seem right (from what little I know). And if anyone knows of a better, similarly affordable option, I’d be eager to hear it. (The Edwards Engineered ones are very nice looking but wayyyy out of my price range.) Thanks!

[Jim Jones]

I worked several years at making half-tone duplicates up to 32x40 inches on vacuum frames. The original and copy were sandwiched between fairly thick glass and thick strong air-tight fabric. This allowed a working vacuum of about -25 PSI. The frames linked to in the original post appear to work at a much lower vacuum, which would limit the closeness of contact between original negative and copy. Perhaps it suffices for copying continuous tone negatives, but half-tone copying with large UV light sources demanded very close contact. Upon second thought, the porous nature of alternative prints should permit much less vacuum for adequate draw-down.

[Drew Wiley]

Remarkably little vac power is required if there is no leakage around the perimeter. Depends on the efficiency of the frame design. A more common problem is too much vac drawdown. Too powerful a pump requires a bleeder valve - a good feature in any event.

[Kiwi7475]

I have the medium one. Works well, I use it to make 11x14 carbon prints. I have no real complaints. The vacuum is sufficient although not amazing, but you don’t need much to make good exposures; the pump requires adding oil frequently as it leaks. This has nothing to do with the seller, most cheap pumps will do that but I have no desire to upgrade it.

[Duolab123]

That's pretty neat. No glass definitely would help with UV

[esearing]

Consider this - Noisy oil splattering energy consuming pump vs quiet glass contact print frame for a salt print at 30 minutes to 1 hour.

[Tin Can]

I hate those crappy oil filled and leaking Air Conditioner vac pumps

Garbage!

I agree, use a glass plate leaf spring pressure box

Cheap and simple

[Drew Wiley]

Quiet Oilless vac pumps have been around a long time.

[Tin Can]

I use one

Quiet Oilless vac pumps have been around a long time.

[Drew Wiley]

There were millions of them made for industrial line applications. The ones adapted for graphics applications were just a small percent.