Anyone using an Olec AL-53 with a light integrator?

[ebscreen]

Congrats!

On a medium age bulb (originally calibrated to 1 lu./sec) a 125 mesh coated 1/2 was right about 35 lu.
That was at a distance of about 3 feet from glass to glass and a super wide reflector. 5Kw.
Oh, and a Photopolymer (L1250?) spectrum bulb, same emulsion. Open air exposure, no enclosure.

Rough starting point anyways. Only one way to tell for sure.

[ZooCity]

GREAT SUCCESS!!  New relay soldered in and it works great!!

Now, Zoo, here's a quote you typed over on SPOF forever ago when I built my frame.  Think this is a good start for exposure with Aquasol HV now that we're talking apples to apples?  You're exposing at the highest setting, 5000w right?

You'll have to find out for yerself there.  It's hard telling how much UV in the 350-420 nm spectrum that setup is going to throw and how much the distance from the screen and the thickness (and type of) glass will take away from it.  On the above described olec my thickest coated Aquasol HV screens on a 115tpi mesh shot in around 16 sec. but, again, there's no reference but your own setup to go off of.

Good to hear!

I'll tell ya everything I know:

• Always @ 5k watts
• 5/8" thick regular float glass (green tint from the side)
• Can't remember distance from screen.
• Bulb is a generic L-1250 or 1252 can't recall but 1252 I think. ( again)
• Aquasol HVP

Our common exposures by tpi/thread diameter, coat (R=round edge T=thin edge), and LTUs

90/71      2/2R    18 ltu
110/71    2/2R    17
150/48    2/1R    15
180/48    2/1R    14
225/40    2/1T    11
310/30    2/1T    10

*these are all "s" meshes but aren't too far off from their regular mesh cousins.   

Time for exposure calibration- Enjoy! 

[IntegrityShirts]

Wow, thanks guys.  I will certainly start out with all the advice you have given.  Now I need to plop this boat anchor under my glass and pull the metal halide out for shop lighting!

[IntegrityShirts]

Awesome.  Just shot a 110 at 17 units and it came out perfect!  Big thanks!!

[StuJohnston]

So I picked up an Olec AL-53 and AL-121 with a millington vac frame for an embarrassingly low price today. I haven't fired it up yet as all of the 220 in the shop is the wrong plug At least I know the vac table pull lots of mercury! Anyhow, it came with the blue end 1250 and I was wondering if I would gain anything significant by replacing it with the 1252 that is made for dual cure. I am currently using kiwo poly plus emulsions, my favorite is the S, but I am using a gallon of the SRX at the moment and got a sample of the HWR that I will christen the new kit with.

@ZooCity, I actually got a manual with my millington. It was printed with a dot matrix printer and the illustrations were made by pressing keys on the keyboard. The guy you talked to was right, there isn't anything important in it other than a reminder to make sure the table is level. It also goes into the importance of oiling the vacuum pump, which is odd because it has an oil-less unit on it. Might be a replacement I suppose.

@ebscreen, Olec went away?

[ZooCity]

Stu:

Olec's around still.  Sometimes it's hard to tell but then all of the sudden someone picks up the phone and you can get your parts.  I'm not sure if it's a division of another co. now or what. 

ASCII art for the manual?  That's hilarious....and awesome. 

Unless it's a really big vac table it shouldn't be in need of a lot of juice.  The AL-53 takes the appropriate dedicated circuit with the right Nema plug, I have one of the twist-locks on ours, if I get a second I'll give you specs.  Also check that the correct one is installed on that used piece before assuming it's the female one that you need. 

[StuJohnston]

The plug isn't a problem, I have an electrician coming in to wire a 30A outlet. It's just that all I have are 20A and 50A haha. The cable says Olec, so I am assuming it's the right one. Also the max draw is 25A. You're right on the vac table, its a 6amp 120v pump.

I haven't had to deal with getting parts from olec, yet, but from all that I saw when I researched it, they seem to be in business. Their website works, for the most part. No manuals at this time though. And their lamps are still being sold with exposure units from DOUTHITT and I think millington even.

One really minor thing is that the integrator seems to require a vacuum delay. I find that really unnecessary because I don't have a remote switch on the vacuum pump, so the delay is from me turning on the pump and waiting for it to come to full vacuum before I hit the start button on the integrator. Is there a way to bypass the vacuum delay? I tried entering 0, but it doesn't seem to want to take that. The manual makes me wish that I had one of the Al-9xx integrators.

[ZooCity]

I forgot to answer your initial question on the bulb types and the short answer is I don't see big difference between the photopolymer and the dual-cure bulbs.  I'd like to hear from others on this as well but we just go with the 1252 typically and run 95% pure photopolymer.  There is a nice spectrum diagram out there on the interwebs somewhere but I can't remember where.

Vac delay, I don't have any experience with that yet.  I thought you needed that QEC box or whatever to use that function but I may have read that part incorrectly. 

[StuJohnston]

From the spectrum diagram, it looks like it has a much more even distribution of UV, less of a spike in the upper area than the 1250. I have the feeling that if I never try the 1252, I won't miss it. Even if it isn't the optimal spectrum, it will expose faster than the 1kW MH grow light I was using (Hey, everyone has to start somewhere!)

Though I do know that the bulb will either die or cease to expose fast and then I will be faced with this decision. Or if I am on top of things, I will be getting a replacement soon. The other part, aside from the cap switch, is that it looks like I would need to change the photocell to a wide band unit.

The remote box is required if I wanted to have the integrator control the vacuum, but the delay seems to be hardwired. I must be doing something wrong. It seems simple enough that I should be able to figure it out by experimenting.

Thanks for the help ZooCity!

Oh yeah, I was confusing the power plug with the plug that connects the PSU to the lamp. It looks like the cord is generic, but still, it has the 30A plug, so it should be all good.

[IntegrityShirts]

I think there's a default vacuum countdown for the integrators.  Mine's default is 12 seconds.  What's weird is even if I set it lower than 12 seconds it still has a 12 second delay.  Maybe that's the minimum amount of delay before exposure?  I'd like to get a QXD box but damn they're hard to find!

[StuJohnston]

Thankfully, everything but the time seems to reset when it has a power cycle so the vacuum delay went away. I am pretty sure I pressed the vacuum button out of curiosity and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

Got it hooked up yesterday and it didn't have vac delay when I turned it on thankfully. It exposed the screens in about the time that the tech sheet said for the kiwo poly plus hwr using the ulano step wedge with a film from my printer that is a copy of the original film because the ulano pig film has a much lower dmin. If the tech sheet for the QX-1 is telling me the truth, it should only take a around 20 seconds for a 2+2 with skim coat! I think that I will try that tape dam idea to put an extra thick layer of emulsion on top of a dried screen with the QX-1 since I don't think that I will get much use out of it otherwise.

About the remote box, I bet that the remote control for the vacuum is just a 120v relay. I am going to hook my multimeter up to the remote din plug to see if it is putting out a steady voltage on any of the pins during the vac delay. If it does, I will just get a relay that takes that voltage to trigger and voila! I think I found one somewhere, it was about $130. Not too bad compared to the rest of the accessories, but a lot more than I want to pay if it can be replaced with an $8 relay.

Speaking of accessories, My unit came with the filter box and filters for making bluelines, something I will never use. It looks like the things retail for $800! This reminds me of the false economy of buying a used super car that has depreciated greatly in value, or luxury car for that matter. Like the old 8 series bmw's, no matter how cheap you buy it, it will cost you more money to maintain it than you may realize. I am beginning to feel that way about the Olec, though it is worth it.

[ZooCity]

We have two Olec units and alltogether, including bulbs over the years, parts, etc. have sunk less than $1k into them.  That's pretty hard to beat. 

Once in a while I look at an Amergraph 7500w unit and ponder but these used Olecs, provided you're willing to put a little time into them, yield one hell of a roi in my opinion.  We're exposing just a fast and clean as any other system out there for a fraction of the cost.

[Rick Roth]

I would highly recommend that you be careful. I'm not an overly cautious guy, but working on these things is not to be taken lightly (pun intended.) One of my local suppliers has two artificial fingers that replace the ones he lost working on an exposure unit. This isn't a story of "I heard of a guy", I can take a photo of his fingers next time he is in here if you want.

Also I second the recommendation on getting information from Douthitt. They have been incredibly helpful to us.

Third, the Olec units are awesome.

[ericheartsu]

dragging this up from the dead.

just scored a al-53 with a 121 integrator and vacuum table for under $900.

I've got the light source set up, but not the vacuum table.

can anyone give me some tips on the integrator? ours seems super finicky at the moment. It seems the low level light is always on, or maybe that's the u.v. light? i can't tell

[ScreenFoo]

Is the 'Light Intensity' set right?  Could be a PS deal if the integrator is telling it to go to high power but it won't.

Even at 1.2K or whatever, it's still a pretty decent light source.    The integrators are fun, if you like programming an old VCR...