Agfa-gevaert Ag

Werner Sieber

Viktor Osegowitsch

Wilfried Hehn

Erwin Laar

Thomas Hammer

Franz Kocourek

Josef Spickenreither

Wolfgang Viehrig

Friedrich Ganser

Siegfried Kurths

Hans-Dieter Frick

Apparatus for drying sheets of photographic material has a group of parallel lower horizontal shafts and a group of parallel upper horizontal shafts which are staggered with reference to the lower shafts. All of the shafts extend transversely of the direction of travel of sheets therebetween and carry elastic rollers which engage and advance the sheets. Certain shafts carry holders for U-shaped guide members which flank the path of the sheets between the rollers on the upper and lower shafts and prevent the leaders of the sheets from curling into the spaces between the upper or lower shafts. The distance between the axes of two neighboring lower or upper shafts is at least 2D and the distance between the upper and lower guide members is less than D, wherein D is the outer diameter of a roller. The spaces between the rows of rollers on neighboring upper and lower shafts serve (a) to provide room for nozzles which discharge streams of hot gaseous fluid to expel moisture from advancing sheets and (b) to provide room for evacuation of moisture-laden fluid.

Apparatus for drying sheet-like photographic material

A device for processing a photographic film through a moistening chamber and a drying chamber has a transition zone where a pair of counterpositioned squeegee rollers is located, of which the upper roller contacts an emulsion carrying surface of the film and the lower roller engages the back surface of the film. The film is advanced to the transition zone from the moistening chamber by a pair of transporting rollers rotated with a predetermined speed. The lower squeegee roller is rotated with a speed exceeding the speed of rotation of the transporting rollers so that a predetermined tension is applied only to the back side of the film to avoid a potential damage to the emulsion carrying surface of the film.

Device for processing a photographic film

The film developing machine includes a tank containing developing fluid, to which a dosing device continually adds regenerating fluid received from a regenerating-fluid supply tank. To prevent the gradual emptying of the supply tank from producing an accuracy-reducing gradual decrease in the pressure applied to the input side of the dosing device, the latter is connected to the supply tank via a buffer vessel provided with an internal valve mechanism serving automatically to keep the volume of regenerating fluid in the buffer vessel substantially constant despite variations in the amount of regenerating fluid contained in the supply tank.

Accurate dosing of regenerating fluid to processing-fluid-tank in film

Fluid is withdrawn from plural fluid-filled tanks via respective outflow conduits leading into a common mixing conduit which includes a mixing pump, and then branches off through respective inflow conduits for return of intermixed fluid back to the individual tanks. Each inflow conduit is provided with a valve unit comprising a vessel-like housing having an inlet port and an outlet port. The flow from the inlet port to the outlet port is regulated in dependence upon the height of fluid in the respective tank. The fluid height is sensed indirectly by sensing the height or pressure of fluid in the interior of the vessel-like housing, the latter being at least partly lower than the height of fluid in the respective tank. Thus, the return of fluid into each tank is regulated to maintain a respective fluid height therein independently of the other tanks.

Intermixing of fluid in plural tanks while maintaining the fluid levels

Apparatus for simultaneous viewing of front and rear surfaces of webs of exposed and developed photographic paper has a frame which supports a rearwardly and upwardly inclined transparent pane constituting the front panel of a box. The frame has a rear wall which is normal to the pane and carries two spindles extending in parallelism with the plane of the pane and serving to support supply and takeup reels for a web of photographic paper whereby the rear side of the web portion between the reels lies against the front side of the pane and the front side of such web portion is observable from the front side of the frame. The box and/or the frame contains a drive which can rotate the one or the other spindle in a direction to cause the respective reel to collect the web while braking the other spindle, and the box contains a pair of mirrors which reflect the image of the rear side of the web portion through the pane so that such image can be seen by a person sitting or standing in front of the frame and viewing the front side of the web portion. At least the spindle for the supply reel is close to the floor so that the supply reel, which normally carries a large roll of convoluted photographic paper, need not be lifted well above the floor in order to be placed onto the respective spindle.

Growing community of inventors

Munich, Germany

Werner Sieber