have you ever wondered what goes into making a roll of film? Since 1879 ILFORD
products have provided photographers with a way to see the world in black and
white.
To take a look behind the film we must travel to where it's made a little
village called Mobberley
In Cheshire, England just 15 miles south of Manchester lies the quiet village of
Mobberley home to a hundred and forty years of ILFORD filmmaking magic through
the Harman Technology Factory. The site first acquired by ILFORD in 1928
manufactures black-and-white films paper and chemicals for photographic use.
Harman technology's dedication to quality starts with its employees if you
were to ask anyone how long they've worked for the company decades of
experience tally up. I've been in this role now for just over 20 years, worked
for ILFORD for 15 years, 34 years, 35 years, going on 32 years, because i've been
doing it for that long now it's just like second nature really but I really
enjoy what I do. Both Kevin and I have been here for over 30 years
each I've been the plant manager of the emulsion making making plant for 20 years.
in the plant we make photographic emulsion. We begin at the start of the
process with photographic emulsion the key ingredient in the making of
photographic film and paper so let's go inside and have a look at what photographic
emulsion looks like.
So this is photographic emulsion which are very small crystals of silver halide
dispersed in in gelatin. Over here is an electron mic of what the crystals
look like and they're dispersed in gelatin. After the product is made it's
put into a cold store and then it's spread onto film or paper base for
photographic customers. The emulsion is created in total darkness and with the
help of this machine is pumped into 5 kilo bags and placed into a cold storage
set at 6 degrees Celsius. Nice and cold yes? There are different recipes for
photographic emulsion with an important variable being the crystals. The crystals
help determine important factors for a photographer such as the grain of the
film as well as its ability to capture light, its ISO speed. In general terms
they greater the surface area of the crystal they the faster it will be.
As you go through from PANF to FP4 to HP5 we're increasing speed. The crystals
are bigger and in general terms the iodide content is greater as well.
Before the emulsions can go into full-scale coding production they're
heavily tested by research and development scientists on a smaller
scale. I'm Beth and I'm one of the sciences here at Harman technology. Me
personally I get to work in both analytical and product and development
so I get to start right at the beginning from raw material testing and get to
have a product come in see exactly what it is and if it's the right product and
then I get to come downstairs and put it in my own coating package. It's part
of my job in research and development to make sure that you're giving the
customers confidence in when they put that film into their camera and that
they're going to get a picture out that they expect to get and not something
that's completely different and so that's why we test our products so much.
So once we've formulated a coding package we'll bring it down here to our
pilot coding facility and here is a much smaller version of our main production
facility it's about a twentieth of the size. We'll bring it here and we'll put
each layer into one of these, so we'll put non-stress, wetting agent, emulsion
layer and then we'll connect the pumps and it's all done by computers our pump
rate so we can decide at what rate that they come through the three slot coating
head over here and once they're coming through smoothly Sylvia can decide when
to push the coating head towards the film and start coating the package. Check line
three. And we can also change the coating speed to decide how much is laid down
which can give us our characteristics of how much silver is on
there. And once that's done it will go through the dryer which is in a room
behind us. Once they've been incubated we will
test them for a range of things such as granularity and hardness, how much silver
is on there is it what we expected and from there we can decide whether to
recoat on our pilot machine or take it through to production and scale up the
whole process.
This is the coating plant. The bags of gelatin emulsion from the emulsion plant
are melted at 40 degrees Celsius in a vessel and mixed with the chemical
ingredients to form what is called the coating circuit. Giant rolls of paper or
film are fed through and can be coated with emulsion at speeds of 3,200 meters
per minute. This is number 14 coding machine there was actually only 12
before and no one wanted to call this one number 13, superstition! You know we
use cascade coating technology so the solutions will flow through the chamber,
out of the exit slot, down the slide and then the base will come and take those
solutions at 40 degrees away from the coater. The second layer flows right
over the top and the third layer over the top.
To see the next part of the process special jump suits, foot covers and hair
nets are required to keep the area as clean as possible. We're entering the
setting room where freshly coated bases are cooled on rollers. We chill by
contact with cold rollers so we apply a vacuum to get maximum contact.
and then we go into our dryer where in 19 sections the web of paper or
film is dried slowly over time to avoid imperfections. At the end of the
conditioner we have a scanner which is scanning the web thousands of times per
second. It's looking for changes in signal, it can be used in transmission or
reflection depending on what product we're on so it's looking for change of
signal. If it sees a bubble you'll see a change of signal that then gets passed
to our QC area and they have a pattern that is printed out both of the length
and across the web
after the coating process is complete there's just one problem. How do you move
giant light-sensitive rolls to the next stage of the process located in an entirely
different building? The solution lies in coffins. They are effectively film roll boxes
but we call them coffins because they looked like coffins.
They're just effectively metal boxes which the film sits and rests in. It's
light tight clearly, and they are used to transport the film from the coating
area to the finishing area.
Before the sensitised base can be turned into the 35 mm film we all know
and love, the metal cassettes must first be created. That's where the CMU cassette
manufacturing unit comes into play. Here's Anthony to tell us more about the
process. The CMU line manufactures the cassettes for film to
be put into. It starts off with the sheet which is fed into the machine where it's stamped
with the mouthpiece than this is flipped over, goes through an oven, a
strip of velvet is applied at either side of the mouthpiece this is then
flipped back over by the machine, goes into the velvet cutter a guillotine cuts
it into a single unit. This is then pushed in to the forming head and its
squished into the size of a cassette. This then travels down the line where a
spool is pushed in and an end cap is put on either side and these are then
crimped. After the 35 mm cassettes are formed they're moved down
the line to marry up with the film. These machines work hard to perform many small
tasks to go from this, to this.
OK so we're on the 35 mm cassette making line. The first thing
that happens is we receive a parent roll from M14 and it's slit into 31
pancakes so it's just 35 mm in width and it's around about 600 meters
in length. These pancakes are delivered to the line in light tight boxes. This is
a training aid so don't worry!
This pancake is loaded onto a rotary
perforating head which creates what we know as the sprocket holes.The
information of the film such as the film stock, frame numbers, and unique
four-digit batch number are also signed onto the film. Meanwhile a hopper
orientates the cassettes into the proper direction for the barcode to be read
ensuring the right film stock is entering the cassette.
The conveyor then takes the cassettes into the darkroom where the machine
spools off either 24 or 36 exposure rolls. The loaded cassettes then exit the
darkroom and head over to packaging.
The 120 process is a different story entirely.
Instead of being contained within a cassette 120 film is wrapped onto a
plastic core of paper backing and then wrapped into a foil wrapper and boxed
Film is sent down from our coating machines upstairs in light tight boxes. We transfer
those slits over to light tight magazines and the magazines are loaded
onto our roll film machine which places the film on a core, adds a paper backing,
inserts exposed and unexposed labels, and deposits the final product into a bin. As
the bins fill with film a technician moves them across the room to the foil
wrapper machine where film is transferred to be wrapped in shiny
silver.
The rolls travel up this conveyor where they're sent through the foiling machine.
The foil is stamped with the film stock type and sealed around each roll.
A bin full of foil-wrapped rolls is then collected and sent to the boxing machine.
So how do Harman technology ensure that each roll of film you load into
your camera is reliable? That's where the quality control specialists come in. They
work concurrently with film production to ensure the line is producing the best
possible product. Kevin Clark I do quality control for Harman technology /
ILFORD Photo. This is my kingdom, to say this is what I enjoy doing the best.
My job is to make sure that any work we produce is top quality and that no
faults go out to the customers I'll be looking for scratches, repeat marks,
anything really. We'll just get anything that 14 find, bring it down, process it
and then look for the faults. I'd say they usually get four tests in about every
four to five minutes. Roll film would be about every 15-20 minutes and we have to
keep up with it to make sure we don't produce any rubbish!
At the end of the 35mm and 120 lines plastic sealed bricks of
film are boxed and loaded on the pallets by the machine. From there they're sent
to the warehouse where they await their final destinations.
My name is Duncan Appleton I've been with ILFORD since 1986. I am the
warehouse manager. The warehouse receives and stows goods manufactured on site.
We then receive orders for customers and we ship them on a daily and weekly basis.
So for instance we've received this pallet here from our film production
department. We will stow this pallet on stock until such time we receive a
customer order,. where we were split it down to satisfy that order and we can
then ship it both within the UK, within the European Union, to the USA, Australia
we're effectively shipping globally.
The next time you venture into your local camera shop to buy a roll of
ILFORD film you'll likely already be contemplating the images you'll make but
perhaps now you'll also think of the hard work that goes on behind the film
and the dedicated staff at the factory in Mobberley.