Film cleaning has always been a necessary
part of their operation, to be certain that all of
the dirt and debris attracted to the film during
the conforming process is removed prior to
transfer to tape.
"When we moved into the 25th floor of a large downtown Chicago office building, the cost of installing venting, the problems of increasing governmental regulations and rising solvent costs made the use of a traditional solvent type film cleaner impractical for our needs," Dunne explained.
"From past experience, we had learned that just a PTR film cleaning machine wasn't adequate to remove the splicing dirt and debris from conformed film negative select rolls. We needed to have these films thoroughly clean. We knew that we needed more cleaning action than a PTR system could guarantee...but yet we didn't need the full cleaning capability of a solvent based system.
"Then we came to NAB in 1995 and saw the new Lipsner-Smith EXCEL 900. We recognized that this could be the answer to our needs. The EXCEL 900 offered us the additional wet cleaning action we were looking for, without the need for venting or using expensive solvents" Lipsner-Smith arranged for us to receive a machine for evaluation. The machine stayed! It is used constantly!
"Our EXCEL 900 handles the negatives very well, with no damage...and this is very important to Cutters, having come from a film background. Select rolls come back from conforming tails out. We can run that film through the Excel for one pass. At 100 feet-per-minute film speeds, time is not a problem...and the film is then heads out, which eliminates rewinding.
"And the EXCEL 900 is totally automatic. We can load it, start the cleaning process and then go off and do other work while the machine cleans the film. It's quiet too!" Dunne added.
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