Chemistry

For black and white, I use the following chemicals:

• Kodak Polymax RT Developer (Made for high temperature roller transport processors)
• Kodak Indicator Stop (Though any stop should work fine)
• Ilford Hypam Fixer Kodak does also make a Polymax RT Fixer, but I have not used it, since I already had the 5L jug of Hypam, which seems to do fine with replenishment.

I replenish all three chemicals at 13ml working strength solution per 8x10 print. (approx 250ml for 20 8x10). That’s probably overkill for the stop, but stop is cheap, and it does evaporate and carry-over. I’ve been on the same beginning mix of chemicals since Septemper (4 months) with just replenishment and draining the machine into air-tight bottles if I’m not using it for more than a couple days.

I would recommend staying away from using dektol in the machine, as it has a nasty habit of leaving brown/black deposits behind, as well as oxidizing rapidly in the machine.

I have a initial rinse tray just below the output of the processor, to catch the wet fixed prints and do an initial rinse before going into the washer. This tray has about 2 liters of fresh water, and it gets replaced every session. One minor annoyance with this processor, is sometimes the prints coming out get caught and need to be knocked loose. The side of the machine below the output needs to be wiped down regularly as fixer residue likes to build up.

Results

The prints come out of the machine fixed, and ready to wash. I have a temporary rinse tray at the output of the machine, to knock the majority of the fixer off before the prints go into my print washer (article on that soon).

They look identical to prints done in trays, with the added benefit of being identical across a series with no little variations due to temperature changes or time changes in processing.