Kodak Film Factory Revealed

October 18, 2022 by Dave Walker 51 Comments

Anybody born before the mid 1990s will likely remember film cameras being used to document their early years. Although the convenience of digital cameras took over and were then themselves largely usurped by mobile phones, there is still a surprising variety of photographic film being produced. Despite the long pedigree, how many of us really know what goes into making what is a surprisingly complex and exacting product? [Destin] from SmarterEveryDay has been to Rochester, NY to find out for himself and you can see the second in a series of three hour-long videos shedding light on what is normally the strictly lights-out operation of film-coating.

Kodak first digital camera 1975 — Kodak’s first attempt at a digital camera in 1975. The form-factor still left something to be desired…

Kodak have been around in one form or another since 1888, and have been producing photographic film since 1889. Around the turn of the Millennium, it looked as though digital photography (which Kodak invented but failed to significantly capitalize on) would kill off film for good, and in 2012 Kodak even went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which gave it time to reorganize the business.

They dramatically downsized their film production to meet what they considered to be the future demand, but in a twist of fortunes, sales have surged in the last five years after a long decline. So much so, in fact, that Kodak have gradually grown from running a single shift five days per week a few years ago, to a 24/7 operation now. They recently hired 300 Film Technicians and are still recruiting for more, to meet the double-digit annual growth in demand.

[Destin] goes to great lengths to explain the process, including making a 3D model of the film factory, to better visualize the facility, and lots of helpful animations. The sheer number of steps is mind-boggling, especially when you consider the precision required at every step and the fact that the factory runs continuously… in the dark, and is around a mile-long from start to finish. It’s astonishing to think that this process (albeit at much lower volumes, and with many fewer layers) was originally developed before the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight.

We recently covered getting a vintage film scanner to work with Windows 11, and a little while back we showed you the incredible technology used to develop, scan and transmit film images from space in the 1960s.

Continue reading “Kodak Film Factory Revealed” →

How To Grow Your Own Pyramid Salt Crystals

October 13, 2022 by Lewin Day 22 Comments

The regular granular table salt you’re used to isn’t the most attractive-looking seasoning out there, even given its fundamentally compelling flavor. You don’t have to settle for boring old salt anymore though, because [Chase] has shown us you can grow your own pyramid salt crystals at home!

Pyramid salt crystals can grow naturally, and typically occur in locations where salt pools are undisturbed under the warmth of the sun. However, it’s possible to grow them on purpose, too. As a bonus, their hollow structure means they dissolve very quickly on the tongue, and can taste “saltier” than typical granular salt.

To grow your own, you’ll need a bag of salt, which is mixed with some water. You’ll want to do so in a glass dish, as the salty solution you’ll be making can ruin metal cookware. The dish can then be heated up on an electric hotplate, which is used to heat the solution to between 60 and 70°C.

A small amount of food-grade potassium alum is also added to the solution to calm the convection currents in the heated solution, allowing the crystals to form gently without sticking and clumping together. As the water boils away, the rectangular-pyramidal crystals grow.

Naturally, you must be careful before eating the results of any home-grown lab experiments. However, [Chase] reports having licked some of the crystals and has confirmed they do indeed taste salty. [Chase] also notes several ways in which the parameters can be changed to grow different types of pyramid crystals, too.

We’ve featured [Chase]’s crystal-growing work before. If you’ve got your own cool DIY crystal projects cooking up in the lab, be sure to let us know!

Toilet Paper Tube Pulls Dissolved Resin From IPA, Cures It For Disposal

October 12, 2022 by Donald Papp 53 Comments

SLA 3D printing with resin typically means rinsing parts with IPA (isopropyl alcohol). That process results in cloudy, used IPA containing a high concentration of dissolved resin. The dual goals of cleaning and reusing IPA are important ones, and we have to say, [Jan Mrázek]’s unusual experiment involving a UV source and slowly-rotating paper tube to extract and cure dissolved resin might look odd, but the results are definitely intriguing.

Dissolved resin successfully pulled from IPA and cured onto a cardboard roll. This particular one rotated a bit too quickly, trapping IPA in the curing process and yielding a slightly rubbery wad instead of a hard solid.

The best way to dispose of liquid resin is to cure it into a solid, therefore making it safe to throw away. But what about resin that has been dissolved into a cleaning liquid like IPA? [Jan] felt that there was surely a way to extract the dissolved resin somehow, which would also leave the IPA clean for re-use. His solution? The device shown here, which uses a cardboard tube to pull dissolved resin from an IPA bath and a UV source to cure it onto the tube.

Here’s how it works: the tube’s bottom third sits in dirty IPA, and UV LEDs shine on the top of the tube. The IPA is agitated with a magnetic stirrer for best results. A motor slowly rotates the cardboard tube; dissolved resin gets on the tube at the bottom, UV cures it at the top, and the whole thing repeats. Thin layers of cured resin slowly build up, and after long enough, the roll of cured resin can be thrown away and the IPA should be clean enough for reuse.

So far it’s a pretty successful test of a concept, but [Jan] points out that there are still some rough edges. Results depend on turning the tube at a good rate; turning it too quickly results in IPA trapped with the cured residue. On the plus side, the UV source doesn’t need to be particularly powerful. [Jan] says that Ideally this would be a device one could run in a sealed container, cleaning it over one or two days.

Resin printing is great, but it’s a messy process, so anything that makes it less wasteful is worth checking out. Got any ideas for improving or building on this concept? If so, don’t keep ’em to yourself! Let us know in the comments.

A complex piece of laboratory glassware with liquid metal inside

A Liquid Metal Fountain That Works At Room Temperature

September 1, 2022 by Robin Kearey 26 Comments

A fountain is a great way of adding a little flair to an otherwise boring pond. All you need is a pump, a filter and some pipes, along with a nozzle to scatter the pressurized water in some aesthetically pleasing way. Fountains are generally quite safe: if any of the parts malfunction, the worst thing that can happen is some minor flooding.

How different this is for [Advanced Tinkering]’s recent project, the NaK Fountain. If this one were to spring a leak, it’s quite likely to take out its surroundings in a huge fireball. That’s because the fluid inside is an alloy of sodium and potassium in about a 1:3 ratio, known as NaK (pronounced like “knack”), which is a liquid at room temperature. Unfortunately, it’s also highly reactive: NaK oxidizes quickly when exposed to air and can even catch fire spontaneously. Contact with water will result in a fiery explosion that scatters corrosive liquids everywhere. Continue reading “A Liquid Metal Fountain That Works At Room Temperature” →

Make Your Own Vinegar

August 26, 2022 by Danie Conradie 32 Comments

Making fermentation work for us is one of the original hacks that allowed humans to make food last longer, and festivities more interesting. [Mike G] has been experimenting with making his own vinegar, and found the end product to be a delicious addition to his cooking.

The first step is similar to making alcoholic beverages. Take something that contains sugar, like fruit, mix it with water and let stand. Wild yeast will feed on the sugar and create alcohol. Once the alcohol content reaches the 6-12% range, the resulting liquid can be separated from the solids and left exposed to the air. This allows Acetobacter bacteria to convert the alcohol into acetic acid, producing vinegar. The entire process takes around 30 days.

[Mike]’s first round of experiments was mainly with fresh fruit, with the addition of raisins. To prevent white mold from forming the mixtures should be stirred daily, but life got in the way and mold got out of control on all the fruits, except for the raisins. This gave [Mike] the to try another round with dried fruit, which was significantly less prone to mold, and produced deliciously flavored vinegar. [Mike] also demonstrated their use in a couple of mouth-watering dishes.

The DIY vinegar production process is just begging for some fermentation monitoring and automation tech. We’ve seen plenty of sourdough and beer production projects, which we suspect could also be applied to vinegar production with some minor changes.

Continue reading “Make Your Own Vinegar” →

Keycap Shine? No, Shiny Keycaps

August 19, 2022 by Kristina Panos 34 Comments

No matter how often you wash your hands, ABS keycaps will eventually exhibit shine wherever you strike them the most. And that’s the problem right there: the shine might be okay if it were somehow uniform across the surface of the keycaps, but instead it just tends to make one feel seen. And since there’s really nothing you can do except to replace your keycaps (or start with PBT), you might as well embrace the shine, right?

Well, that’s how [mmalluck] feels, anyway. He recently experimented with using acetone vapors to refinish a set of keycaps from Drop, making them super-duper shiny in the process. Now, the operative word here is vapors, because straight acetone would acid-wash those ‘caps faster than you can say ‘bad idea jeans’.

So to that end, [mmalluck] poured acetone in a glass cake pan, used a piece of cardboard to separate the keycaps from the acetone, and covered it all with a glass cutting board. It doesn’t take very long to achieve a good result, and [mmalluck] says it’s better to err on the side of too-short instead of risking reaching the point of too-melted.

We wouldn’t have thought we’d react this way, but we think they’re pretty cool looking. That particular set seems just right for this process, which makes them look like new old-stock typewriter keys or something. Looks way better than the ultra-personalized shine of usage. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Via KBD #90

Scavenging CDs For Flexible Parts

August 1, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 42 Comments

CDs are becoming largely obsolete now, thanks to the speed of the internet and the reliability and low costs of other storage media. To help keep all of this plastic out of the landfills, many have been attempting to find uses for these old discs. One of the more intriguing methods of reprurposing CDs was recently published in Nature, which details a process to harvest and produce flexible biosensors from them.

The process involves exposing the CD to acetone for 90 seconds to loosen the material, then transferring the reflective layer to a plastic tape. From there, various cutting tools can be used to create the correct pattern for the substrate of the biosensor. This has been shown to be a much more cost-effective method to produce this type of material when compared to modern production methods, and can also be performed with readily available parts and supplies as well.

The only downside to this method is that it was only tested out on CDs which used gold as the conducting layer. The much more common aluminum discs were not tested, but it could be possible with some additional research. So, if you have a bunch of CD-Rs laying around, you’re going to need to find something else to do with those instead.

Thanks to [shinwachi] for the tip!