How Does Kodak Make Film? (Kodak Factory Tour Part 1 of 3) - Smarter Every Day 271

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FlyingPenguin
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How Does Kodak Make Film? (Kodak Factory Tour Part 1 of 3) - Smarter Every Day 271

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Part 1 of 3, which starts with the process of making the optically clear polyester base of modern film (Kodak also sells these optically clear sheets for other purposes). It is an incredibly complex process. The mind blowing thing is at the end of the line where they roll up the polyester sheets. You can't stop the extrusion process, so there's an ingenious accumulator that takes up slack in the sheet while the rolls are switched out. This was an awesome tour. Looking forward to the rest in the series.

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Re: How Does Kodak Make Film? (Kodak Factory Tour Part 1 of 3) - Smarter Every Day 271

Post by Executioner »

Wow that was incurable! That place is HUGE! It would be easy to get lost. It was also nice to see the old guys handing down the engineering and experience to the younger guys. I had no idea that analog film was making a come back like cassettes.
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Re: How Does Kodak Make Film? (Kodak Factory Tour Part 1 of 3) - Smarter Every Day 271

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Took a while, but he just posted part 2:

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Re: How Does Kodak Make Film? (Kodak Factory Tour Part 1 of 3) - Smarter Every Day 271

Post by Pugsley »

Watched part 2 Saturday and man... What a process. I would hate to be on maintenance at a plant like that. The whole concept of all that "film" floating on air over that great a distance.
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Re: How Does Kodak Make Film? (Kodak Factory Tour Part 1 of 3) - Smarter Every Day 271

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Sat down and watched this last night. Man, what a complicated process. Yeah, the air float conveyor system is just amazing. I also have a hard time believing that they can pour multiple layers of colored gelatin that reliably onto the film. Can you imagine what a mess it must be when the sheet tears and that goo splatters all over the inside of one of those drying rooms? I also couldn't help thinking about how many hard years of research and tweaking led to this level of technology. Just the fact that sometime in the 90s when they built that fab, they needed to take into account that the drip trays needed to be anchored to bedrock to avoid vibrations.

Pretty amazing he was allowed to even get close to that equipment. If I was a tech working one of those rooms, I wouldn't want anyone in there even breathing on those things.
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Re: How Does Kodak Make Film? (Kodak Factory Tour Part 1 of 3) - Smarter Every Day 271

Post by Pugsley »

The real question is howd they do it before all this?
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Re: How Does Kodak Make Film? (Kodak Factory Tour Part 1 of 3) - Smarter Every Day 271

Post by FlyingPenguin »

Part 3 is up:

"Turns out I’m 'woke.' All along, I thought I was just compassionate, kind, and good at history. "

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Re: How Does Kodak Make Film? (Kodak Factory Tour Part 1 of 3) - Smarter Every Day 271

Post by Losbot »

Damn, that was a long delay for part 3.
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