Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day.
I love analog film photography.
There's something to me about being able to capture a memory
in a physical object with light and physics and chemistry.
It's just beautiful.
In a previous episode of Smarter Every Day,
we went down to Montgomery, Alabama, to visit Indie film lab.
These are the people that develop my film,
and we get to learn all about the chemistry and the process.
It's really, really cool, and I really enjoyed it.
But today we're going to do something completely different.
I don't know if you were aware of this,
but analog photography is making a huge comeback.
It's not just weirdos like this and that, like this stuff.
Everybody is trying this, and if you don't believe me, go look up the second hand
prices for old analog cameras like this, they are through the roof.
Which brings up a question.
If analog film photography is popular and analog film
is a consumable, what does that mean for the supply of film?
Or are they just selling some big stockpile?
Or are they actually manufacturing this stuff today
in a way that we can bank on for the foreseeable future?
So I'm happy to report
that the people at Indie Film Lab introduced me to someone at Kodak,
and I asked if I could come see the manufacturing process, and they said
Yes, yes.
That means we are going to get to go to the place for all things film.
The Kodak plant in Rochester, New York, and I am so incredibly excited.
Just to be clear, there's no Kodak sponsorship going on here.
I just asked if I could go see the stuff and they said yes.
And I kept asking more questions and they kept opening more doors.
We got to go to the basement to see like the big cauldron, I guess
you call it, where they mixed the chemicals.
This is an incredible few videos because it is going to take
three videos because of how complicated this process is.
There are three primary manufacturing things that have to happen in order
to make this 35 millimeter.
Can a film happen?
Number one is the support.
That's what I think of when I think of film.
That that floppy part there, that right there is called the support.
And there's a whole manufacturing process that we're going to learn
about that goes into that.
The second thing we're to learn about is the light sensitivity part,
and that's putting an emulsion
over the top of that support and making the film light sensitive.
That's its own thing.
And spoiler alert,
that has laminar flow in the process so, you know, I'm going to love that.
Number three is the packaging of the film.
Now, here's the thing to think about once you've made the film Light-Sensitive.
How do you get it into a package?
Because you can't expose it to light after that.
So everything from the moment you coat it to the moment
it's in the can has to be done in the dark.
We're going to learn all about that. So there's going to be three videos here.
Number one, we're going to learn about the sport.
Number two, going to learn about the light sensitivity.
Number three, we'll learn about the packaging.
And I love it.
So I hope you're ready to go on this ride.
Because I'm excited.
Let's go to Rochester, New York and learn
how Kodak makes film for film photography.
Let's go get smarter every day.
All right.
We're going into the lot at Kodak.
See if Matts here, here we are at the gate at Lot.
Says call received when lit, but it's not lit yet.
This is my buddy Trent.
When I found out I was going to go to the Kodak plant in New York,
I asked him to come along because he introduced me to film
and I knew it was something he would really enjoy.
At Wal-Mart but didn't see it.
The magic's made it hit the button again.
You, Matt?
It's Matt. Yeah.
Nice to meet you, man. Pleasure. How are you?
So we walked into the iconic Kodak Center in downtown Rochester, New York,
and this place is amazing.
Our point of contact at Kodak is Matt Stauffer.
We geared up, and, you know, the tour is starting off right when you
brush by the world's first digital camera on your way to see the awesome stuff.
We will.
Matt: We'll definitely come back through here, Destin: sounds great.
Destin: What's your title here?
Matt: So I'm actually a manager.
MATT: Manager in our worldwide information system, so IT
Destin: Oh, awesome.
Destin: Yeah. Are you a photographer as well?
Matt: I am a photographer.
Matt: I'm a third generation Kodak here as well.
It's really what we call ourselves here.
My father, my grandfather, plenty of aunts and uncles.
My grandmother.
So, yeah, it's it's not an uncommon story.
Here in Rochester. Destin: Yeah.
Wait for the click and then push
Destin: That was kind of a moment.
Destin: Trent Are you excited?
Trent : Oh, yeah.
If I can fit through this thing
Matt: This is building one next to us.
Kodak Park.
Originated in 1891.
The first building that was built here.
You know, if you're going to.
Build a major manufacturing facility, you need some power.
So this is a steam generation. Plant.
Destin: It's a really pretty park.
Destin: This place was absolutely massive, and I was surprised to find out
that photographic film is only a small percentage of their business.
There's a ton of history here as well.
The old brickwork
makes it really photogenic, like tons of pipes and textures and windows.
It's really cool to take pictures here and just explore the place
we moved along in.
Matt picked up our ride for the tour and we made our way across campus
to where they make the mechanical support for the film.
It was here that we met the experts, Sharon and Mark
Okay, so we are in ESTAR film based manufacturing in. Sharon, Mark.
What is ESTAR?
Well, ESTAR is a Kodak's trade name for P.E.T.
based polyester polyethylene terephthalate.
And that's polyester.
All right. Simply.
And it's the film based that we use to make a lot of our photographic products
these days.
There's another base called Acetate, but a lot of it's done on and on ESTAR.
And we have a continuous
by axial orienting process that we stretch it in two dimensions,
and that gives the polyester basis toughness.
That's why it's real strong. Destin: Oh, so it's a polymer?
It's a polymer, yes.
Destin: What's the advantages?
Do you get more stability with the star? Yes.
And do you get more longevity?
Mark: Recyclable.
Mark: It's very tough, tough, strong, strong strength.
Destin: Got it.
Mark: But for that reason, some people have
problems with using it in a camera
because it might break the camera before it is too strong.
Destin: Oh, the tensile strength is higher.
Mark: Yeah, much, much, much higher.
So I say it is very it is very easy.
And therefore, motion picture film still at least
origination film is still on acetate.
Destin: Because you want.
You want the film. To fail before the camera fails.
So it's. A mechanical strain. Relief in the system, right?
Sharon: Correct. Mark: Correct. Destin: Got it. Okay.
Matt: However, if.
You're in a projector, that thing's going through and you've shown.
That movie you know,
however many hundreds of times, a lot sitting there in the theater
going nowhere, it that strength, they're so that it doesn't wear out.
Destin: Got it. Understood.
Destin: Sharon and Mark gave us a detailed rundown of how all the stuff works.
And after only a few minutes, it became clear to me that they are geniuses.
But it's that fun, humble wizard like genius
that's earned through many decades of solving complex problems.
They need the speeds, the mass flow rates, the temperatures for everything.
There's a lot to learn here, but I hope that at the end of this tour,
you have a fundamental understanding of every major part of the ESTAR
film support manufacturing process while Trent and I are suiting up here.
There's one more thing I want you to be on the lookout for on our tour
There's this theme that I saw everywhere I went at Kodak.
It's clear to me that there's this group of wiser, more experienced employees,
and they're taking the time to gradually bring the younger folks up to speed.
Not only that, but you can feel the excitement
of the younger generation as they actually own it.
Like, they're watching what's going on.
They're taking that knowledge and that understanding,
but they're also getting the work ethic from the older generation
because they're seeing it being modeled.
Keep an eye out for this in these videos.
Because it is impressive to see this young, tech savvy generation
absolutely kicking, butt because of their work ethic.
And you've got the older generation cheering them on saying, hey,
I know I designed this machine, but it's yours now.
This is your legacy.
And they're putting them out there.
They're like, Hey, you should be the one on camera.
It's it's really cool to see this partnership between these two generations
because it absolutely encourages me about the future of American manufacturing.
And it gets me really excited.
Charles, you've been here two and a half years. Charles: Yes, sir.
Destin: So he's an old timer?
Sharon: Oh, yeah.
Charles: Seasoned veteran, one of our veterans.
Destin: Alright.
Destin: Yeah. You might tell me about Palmer.
Charles: Yeah, So this is just polyethylene
terephthalate pellets, so we get it in from our current supplier.
Destin: Okay Charles: so we get it in this pellets form, and we end up converting it into a powder.
Our whole process is built on using a powder
because we used the larger surface area during the solid stating.
So since everything was already set up for that, we like to keep it that way. It
also helps when we add in our stabilizer later down the line so that we can
Destin: Im going to put this in your hand.
Charles: Okay, that's fine.
So that'll help us out, get the stabilizer mixed in as well,
because you really can't add it to the pellets.
Again, surface area is really important, and that keeps the inclusions down
and the machine keeps our film really clean up there.
Destin: What was that word?
Charles: Inclusions Destin: for air inside, Charles: not air, but just for defects.
The stabilizer is actually for taking out catalyst residue.
If you leave it in, you get some nasty looking freckles in the background.
Destin: Got it.
Charles: And it's you just can't have it on the high quality optical film.
Destin: So if I understand correctly.
This is where film starts.
Charles: Yes. Destin: Got it.
So we're going to grind it, make the surface area where.
We can melt that easily.
We're going to melted down and we're. Going to extrude it.
Charles: And then, yeah, then it'll get extruded out through the day into the wheel.
Destin: That's awesome. Yeah. Let's check it out.
So Charles explained that they bring these pellets in on railway cars.
They have their own tracks on campus, and they pull the railcar
up to the building, and one car of pellets will last for two days.
The first step of the process is to mechanically grind up
these relatively large pellets into a fine powder.
Charles took us down to see the grinders in action.
Charles: There are two 50 horsepower motors.
Right now at about 10,000.
Pounds an hour max
Let's take a peek inside. Yeah.
Charles: That's our powder.
That's the powder. Yep.
Destin: That's the powder.
That's going to start the whole process to make the backing for the film.
Destin: So that's a polymer powder, polyethylene, Charles: thats a polyethylene terephthalate powder.
So coming in from the top, we have a pneumatic conveyor,
dilutes picks up all the powder from the bottom
of the grinders, and it transplanted upstairs to our roof.
So it's going about 100 feet up
to 300,000lbs storage tank Destin: Thats amazing.
Destin: That's a really cool elevator.
Chrales: Yeah. Very old elevators.
Destin: It's awesome.
The next step we're going to learn about is what Kodak calls the reactors.
Charles: So we're just going to walk through the control room.
Destin: Okay.
Charles: Hey AL! How are you doing?
Destin: What's up, man?
Charles: This is AL our best operator. And this is Chris.
Destin: How's it going, man? I'm Destin.
AL: All right. Destin: Doing all right?
AL: Yeah. Destin: You guys making it happen?
AL: Trying to! You trying to take a picture.
Yeah. Yeah.
Destin: So this is where you control everything?
Charles: Yeah. Everything's controlled from here.
We have pneumatic panels on the wall, so we still have some of the very old,
original pneumatic stuff.
These are five of our reactors, basically.
And the older ones are all controlled from this panel.
Pneumatically
And you basically can see just about everything that's going on.
Keep track of it.
This is a fluid polymer reactor.
So this is where we would do a solid state.
So you're driving at this point right now, we're drying it. Yes.
Down to five parts per million of moisture and water by weight.
So it's pretty dry.
Destin: Where can you read the moisture here?
So we actually do that using an I.V.
in our lab.
Will every batch will take a sample
and then we'll run it through one of our Tinius Olsens.
Look at the intrinsic viscosity and then we correlate that
with the moisture, Destin: intrinsic viscosity, meaning when it's when it's melted.
Charles: Yeah. So we put it through like continuous.
Also in this little machine, you put your sample in
and it's basically a tiny extruder
and then it just measures the forces and gives you that viscosity.
Destin: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah.
Destin: And you can correlate that to moisture.
Charles: yes based on the water content itll have a different IV
Charles: IV being intrensic viscosity
So it's basically the amount of water or solvent in the polymer.
So these are some of the older FPRs we have.
I'm only bringing in here because I want you to take a look.
Destin: IPRs What do you mean by that? FPRs (Fluidized Polymer Reactor)
Uh huh.
The only reason I brought in here is this one's out of service,
but it gives you a really good shot at the inside.
So this is how it fills gravity field from the top.
What it will do is it will feed
from up above
all the way until it plugs that line and that line is plugged.
You can't fill it anymore.
So that's when our batches ready to be put into react mode.
Destin So basically you have a pipe coming down. Yes.
So that that goes way up. High.
Yes. You have the pipe coming down.
And when it's full all the way to the pipe, that's when a batch is ready.
Charles: Now, these are about 10,000lbs worth.
Destin: And this will be dry powder at this point.
Charles: Going in. It's wet.
It's going to be dry and ready when we're done with it.
Ready for stabilizer edition.
That is at the bottom, those coils.
Those are the internal heating coils.
We also have some external heating coils wrapped around on the jacked vessel.
Those bring us up to temperature.
Destin: Gotcha. Charles: Yep.
Destin: So it's a basically wet powder comes in, meaning like it has too much moisture.
Correct. Goes in here.
Destin: These coils down here, Charles: they provide the heat source.
So what's going on is it's a fluidized bed reactor.
Destin: So air is pumping in it? Charles: so nitrogen.
So everything has to be nitrogen. Destin: Dry nitrogen.
Yep. So dry nitrogen flows into
the bottom is a distribution plate with tiny holes in it.
And that keeps the powder moving. It's kind of like an ocean.
You see waves and ripples and bursts as it's right and it's pretty cool.
Destin: That is cool.
So do you guys monitor it with cameras or something?
No, I wish.
Yeah. We usually just have sight classes with lights.
Destin: So is this under pressure?
Charles: The whole vessel will usually be under pressure yet.
Destin: Really? Charles: Yes, around seven PSI or so.
Oh, that's legit. Yeah.
So these are all 10,000lbs reactors.
And then over here we have two 20,000lbs reactors that we run all the time.
Destin: So these are running?
Charles: Yes, they're currently running.
So they each have a compressor that just circulates the gas.
They have a glycol scrubber
associated with it to help ship the nitrogen through our absorbers.
And you want to keep your nitrogen clean.
Organics will come off during the process.
Let's see the aldehyde
and some other compounds Destin: So do you just vent the nitrogen?
Charles: No. It's clean and it's recirculated .
We try to conserve as much as possible.
Just about every conveyer we have here is closed loop.
Cause nitrogen is expensive.
Destin: Yeah, that makes sense.
Destin: Is all this stainless?
Charles: Yeah, everything's stainless steel.
Anything that touches the resin has to be stainless.
no aluminum allowed, no silicone because it can oxidized the.
Well, the aluminum is bad for the product
inclusions, and it gets in there that any aluminum dust, it's a big issue.
How's he doing, Sharon? He's great.
He's doing is doing great.
Yeah.
So coming out of the hex.
So coming out of these appears, it is conveyed up to the right above us.
There's another Bin, and now we've put everything to this screener.
It's just a big corn sifter.
Yeah, And its entire purpose is to get anything large
that might be in the process.
out we make sure
we only have a good, good polyester coming out about a uniform size yeah.
This controls your grain size. Well, somewhat.
I mean, there's just about everything helps control the size,
but this will get anything large out if there's a wall scale
like we saw in the last reactor, there still is large on the outside edge
where you get the amorphous material, all that'll come out of here.
Now, of course, the whole powder is has a distribution associated with it.
We check that in our lab checks because we like to keep
the particle size like a standard deviation.
Yeah. For the most part, we have an acceptable range.
So that's the end of your vision into the process.
Charles: Well, there's a little bit more upstairs, but yeah, basically.
Basically the first stage. Yes, correct.
So we have we have we give them the finished powder.
So that way
they can go straight into the extrusion and then the filmmaking process.
Oh, that's awesome.
Charles, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
So the next step of the process is the initial melt screw.
And I didn't understand this at first, but it's very interesting.
Mark took me to the feed hopper on the floor above the screw
and showed me where they could add color to the material
by feeding in colored pellets if they wanted to.
We then went down to the basement and suddenly everything got very warm and
very loud.
Destin: That's a big motor
yeah.
Destin: Is that a gear box? Mark: Yeah!
200 horsepower, lots of heat, lots of noise.
Destin: Okay.
So this is the feed hopper.
Gravity feeding
the powder and the ground re-use into the feed thrown area.
The screw
and then the screws turning, accepts the powder,
and that gets pushed along through generate so much frictional heat that it
melts I will take you to we have a screw this out out of the machine
Destin: Lets do it!
So you got a cart so.
Destin: So it's rotating very fast?
Mark: No it's not actually about
30 rpm.
Destin : Oh okay. Mark: Something Like that.
Yeah, it's going run pretty slow and we've got all the piping is jacketed
because the melt temperature is around 548 degrees Fahrenheit.
So we're trying to control
everything to
uniform temperature screws a little ways down here.
So we keep going. Destin: Mark, you just barely make it under these things.
Yeah. Yeah.
Destin: Are these calibrated for Mark height here.
Close
Destin: That's a gearbox.
Gearbox. Couple of spare
spare parts.
Destin: These are huge.
Destin: Oh, wow. Well, this is amazing.
This is a screw.
Destin: So this is an auger.
This is incredible.
I cannot.
The key stock required to make this thing work.
This is
this is a big project to make one of these.
There's a barrel, and then this
gets installed in the barrel.
And it floats in the barrel.
Yeah.
It has to be very uniform and temperature because you don't want any warping.
Destin: How tall are you, Mark, for scale?
Mark: Six foot five. Destin: Six foot five.
Wow. So that's like
that's like six marks.
It's like 40 feet.
Mark: Yeah. Sharon: Its Like, 10 Sharons lol
Destin: Like ten Sharons!
So these are the different stages of the screw.
You can see where the flight.
Destin: It's called a flight. Mark: It's deep here.
Yeah.
The flights of the screw there, it's deep here, and then it gets shallow.
So you build up a lot of pressure in here.
Oh, you know, as
this material is being is flowing through here,
a lot of pressure, and all of a sudden, it goes down and pressure
we actually pull a vacuum through this little hole right here.
Destin: So this doesn't rotate? Mark: It rotates.
This is rotating all the way around.
But it's the material is only up to about here.
It's being pushed along by these flights.
So this is open area and this screw is actually hollow.
There's a pipe that goes through.
We pull a vacuum on it.
Oh, I see. What you saw.
It gets rid of volatile gases.
Oh, I see. Icky stuff.
So the face of that gets sealed on the outside.
It's hard for me to understand.
Well, not that
the base of this doesn't get sealed, but the flights are pretty well sealed.
Okay. In the barrel of the screw. Okay, so.
So you and that just seals on the other end, right?
Yes. And seals on the other end.
Okay, so let me understand the process.
So we put the powder in here, right?
There's a pipe that's a set diameter. Yep.
All around this.
And so that seals right here on the edge.
All right.
So this powder starts here.
Does it come in here?
It comes in there. Right here. Right there.
So once it comes in here, it pushes the powder that way.
This is like an Archimedes screw on steroids, kind of.
But it's not using gravity for liquid.
So as
mass comes in here, it starts moving that way.
You've got a gap here, right?
And as you go down, the gap gets smaller.
And smaller.
So you're way over here.
And there's a really big step right here.
You're building pressure here, in here.
And then and then it gets very thin.
So the gap gets very small here.
And then why do you relieve the pressure right here?
So that we can have this vacuum
area where we pull a vacuum on and extract to call the extraction section.
So we pull a vacuum and extract
volatile gases
from the little bubbles and things like that.
And then it keeps going.
Then it keeps going and then it pressurizes again.
And our pressure is coming out of the screw or like
1200 pounds, 1200 psi. Wow.
You know, it's and it's 400 or 540 degrees.
And so when it comes out on this side, right here, oh, look at that.
What am I looking at?
Is this, does this ride in something?
Yeah, I think there's a, there's a place that it kind of floats in on the end.
Kind of like a needle bearing.
But the material actually takes a turn.
See, we're downstairs.
We go up upstairs through a filter
and then through another screw.
So there's two screws, actually.
This one does the heavy lifting, melting, pumping.
Pressurizing So so this I you can see it really good here.
So comes down off gases.
Re compresses.
Compresses. Right.
So it's converging diverging. Converging.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Got it.
Is this an extra 15?
Probably a box.
We got several. An extra one there.
Yeah.
This is an extra one. Look at that.
Didn't even know you had that mark.
Looks like it needs to be cleaned up.
All kind of got a sign that says save the screw Does it really
Lou Harasta
Sharon: Lou is our extrusion engineer
Destin: So can we go back to the motor?
We can.
But this is crazy.
Just to just to show you what this is.
This is a scrap chop or two.
So we don't have these upstairs, but through different as we go through
different parts of the machine, there are little gates on the floor.
We send a scrap down, and this is where it ends up.
So they get chopped up into little pieces and then we sell it.
Gotcha.
So now that we understand the screw, this is our motor
and our gearbox, and the screw is in here, right?
And the hopper the materials coming in, their.
Materials coming in, and it's.
Compressing all the way down.
Where's the vacuum?
It's in the middle, right?
Yeah.
It's actually home.
The vacuum is in the middle.
There's. There's a pipe.
Yeah.
That that they put in
and you see, there's the end of the screw.
This is the end of the screw.
As the resin is blowing up.
This is the resin.
Coming out close up. Okay.
You may already have this figured out, but I'm clearly still confused,
so I need a visual aid to help me figure this out.
Here's the rotating screw.
And up top, you can see a cross-section view of that same screw the shape.
Here's exaggerated, by the way.
That'll make everything a little bit easier for us to understand.
The material comes in the top here as a solid powder
and friction alone heats it up and melts it.
As the molten material gets pushed down the length of the screw,
it gets compressed between the shaft in the sidewall
the shaft and reduces in diameter, which relieves that pressure a bit,
and a void opens up allowing the material to out gas.
A vacuum is then pulled that this little vacuum port and unwanted gases
can bubble out and be removed.
This crew then continues
to push the uniformly molten polymer to the end where it exits out the top.
This is the screw running at 42 rpm
Mark: 42 rpm yeah
4400 lbs an hour
That's the rate of the material leaving without reuse.
But with reuse is 35.
So if we didn't have that recycle loop in there, it would be
higher.
When Mark told me
they filter the output of that screw, I found that to be hard to believe.
They do and it's impressive.
So you the filters
can't see too much.
There's a canister
is a canister.
So the resin gets pumped through sort of filter sticks.
So we've got usually
ten micron or five micron filters depending on which.
You're filtering the plastic.
Yeah, yeah.
We're pumping that resin through instead of.
Pumping the resin through a filter.
What?
Yeah.
We don't have any reason to take any good pictures of filter.
Right.
Filter sticks but it's a fine it's a fine mesh stick.
So how. So these are one time filters then.
No we break down and clean them.
Stainless steel mesh we pump through.
That's amazing.
This is one of the most interesting. Parts of the process to me because I've.
Never thought about.
Filtering.
A molten polymer.
But of course, that's a thing.
But I've never thought about that.
That looks like a mess.
You clean. This thing.
Yeah. They break it down here,
and then it goes up to our filter cleaning room.
So you guys are the kids that mess things up
and you get somebody else that cleans up after you. Yeah, that's pretty much it.
It's amazing. Fun.
This is the other screw that I talk about.
Oh, there's two screws.
A little smaller.
Yeah, it goes.
So we were downstairs,
comes upstairs, there's a filter on the other side of the wall.
And high pressure goes through the filter filtration
step comes over to this screw.
This is called the metering screw.
So this one is a lot smaller and it doesn't have
all those flights where we go high and low.
So it's just pumping material.
So like the name says metering.
If we want to increase the thickness a little bit, we speed this up.
We want to, you know.
thin it out and slow it down.
Destin: This is the fine adjustment. Mark: Fine adjustment.
And again, the one downstairs is doing all the heavy lifting, all the work.
So all that surge if there's any surge pressure fluctuations,
this one's keeping all of that stuff
away from the process, the casting process.
Got it.
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This looks like you guys are walking till like your rocket or something.
Up until this point
we've been processing the material to get it into the perfect molten form.
Now it's time to go upstairs and watch it take shape.
All right.
So the molten stuff comes up, right?
Comes up after it goes through two sets of filters.
And although there's a final filter and it comes through the the wall
filters on the other side and right here,
the 12:00 position of this of this will
is a, is a die.
So we've got the melted ptt the plastic.
We're going turn into film.
So we've got this big wheel here.
Right, right.
And is this where the molten plastic comes on top of the wheel?
Yeah. Right at 12:00. Coming out of.
All right.
It's being extruded you can picture it's very vicious, very thick.
And as the wheel turns it's picking that up.
And in order to get it to stick to the wheel,
we pull a vacuum behind that.
So it makes it stick to the wheel and makes it even all the way across. So.
Destin: So this wheel that's rotating is very, very well.
How do you say this?
The surface finish is almost like a mirror palace polished.
It's a polished surface, polished surface, and it's cool.
Okay, so you're maintaining the temperature of it too, right?
So you've got the molten stuff coming in the top.
It goes all the way around, and you keep a vacuum on it.
So are there holes in the surface of the wheel?
No, no, no.
So there's there's only a vacuum right here.
Okay.
Once, once we get it attached to the wheel, it goes around, say so.
So liquid goes there and it goes around this position.
All the way around. All the way around. Sharon: Down the. Basement.
Destin: Down the basement where we saw earlier up here.
Mark: It cools to a certain point.
540 degrees coming out of the die liquid.
And by the time it gets to this point right here,
it's about 135 degrees Fahrenheit.
Destin: Gotcha. Sharon: Cause the wheels cooled
Got it.
And and as quickly it's important to how quickly we cool everything.
If you're cool too slow, you got a hazy, crystalline structure.
So you have to kind of have control cooling to do that.
So it's nice.
It's kind of like
when you take your ice cream out of the freezer and put it back in.
If it cools slowly over time, you'll get big crystals
but if you cool it quickly, you don't get crystals.
That's kind of the way it is.
Yeah. Yeah. You do that for optical clarity.
Okay. I want this to be clear.
As possible.
Okay.
Destin: And so we create the film and then we pull it off of the wheel.
Yeah, right. And it's pretty thick at this point.
Yeah, it's very thick.
It's like a board.
Sharon: Yeah, what, we showed you in the copy.
moving pretty slow at this point, but it's very thick.
It's like an eighth of an inch.
All right. Yeah,
And then what are we about right there?
So it goes through.
These are drive rollers, pinch rollers.
We're just conveying it.
And so it's coming down going up, down.
And then back. Here.
And we got a cooling section.
There's a
temperature control area in here.
These are our coating stations.
Kodak was very proud of the fact that they can apply coatings to the material
as it travels along the production line.
They introduce me to another
young engineer named Patrick, who explained how they
prepare these coatings for application at various steps along the process.
They have an entire system set up to precisely measure
and get the right temperatures. It's very complicated.
I asked Mark and Sharon why you would coat the product,
and there were a ton of different applications for this process.
They said
you might want to put a primer on the star so that the photosensitive layer
would bind better.
You might have an anti-static layer, you might have a conductive layer.
They said you might even put gelatin over the top and it varies depending on
what the final use of the product is.
One room I thought was really cool is where they store
all the combustible solvents.
This room is literally fortified for explosions in the solvents are stored
in containers
that are electrically grounded to prevent a static discharge from starting a fire.
It felt like a really serious room perfectly.
Preparing these chemical coatings is very important.
In the way they're applied is a very precise operation.
So I'm looking through a film base right now
and one to three layers, correct?
But it's very thick.
It's a very thick material and you get thick, very thick edges.
We call those ribs.
And those are
going to be important for us to grab hold of so we can stretch.
Gotcha.
So you're grabbing the ribs.
Grabbing the ribs.
And so it's going up there.
Goes up If we were coating, we'd be drying the sheet upstairs.
All right.
And once we've dried it,
both applications, we're ready to start stretch.
So it's gone from the wheel there.
It's going over, and then it's going down and up.
Up there. Back down.
All right.
So it's kind of zigzagging back and forth.
And then we get here.
This is where we would coat
Well, we coat there as well out there.
Gotcha.
And then what?
Well, once once we're done drying this last coating, we're ready to stretch.
The next part of the process is called drafting and tentering.
Drafting is actually stretching the material in the direction of travel,
and tinkering is stretching it out to the sides.
A lot of people ask the question, why do you have to stretch it?
Why can't you just extrude it?
And so the process of putting in some other polymers,
the molecules
are very long and they're not oriented when you cast.
So this process gives them orientation, and that's what makes it very tough.
Destin: So so up to this point, right here,
right here, it's going that way.
Up to this point, it's the same diameter.
It's the same width and the thickness. Right.
So our mass flow is always the same throughout the entire process.
Right.
So when you start stretching it, you're going to squish.
It and of squish it's going to it's going to slim down.
And then this will speed up and. Speed up. Yeah.
Destin: So how do you know how much to speed up your rollers?
Oh, there's no drive rollers in here.
So this whole section of the sheet doesn't touch any rollers.
So between here.
Sharron: it pinches the edges the. Ribs.
Mark: Yeah, it holds on to the ribs.
Mark: That's where we get our our structure.
And where all the key got to
be down there and stretching.
Destin: Is that the bulk of what
we're going to Chip back up for the regenerative part is from the ribs.
Yeah. Yeah, not yet.
So we we need those ribs.
We we need them to stretch in both dimensions.
Gotcha.
So this is this is like pulling a bubble and.
Okay, I've got.
Like, taffy, you're going to stretch taffy.
It's heating it up.
And all this is just heat transfer.
Gotcha.
And we're going to heat it up, and I'm pulling on it on that.
And a lot of tension.
And as soon as it gets up to a certain temperature, uniform temperature
will wear across.
It's going to stretch just like Taffy will.
And we have to hold on to those edges
because just like Taffy, it's going to want to neck in to that can extend out.
So we're grabbing those edges with a roller.
And that's what.
Yeah, that's what these are edge rollers.
We can't.
Is it possible to see one of those?
Well, not while we're. Not while you're running.
No, we're running. Cool.
But but you can see the the gap
starts thick.
And right here, there is a big gap stretching in here.
Starting here,
going down tighter and tighter.
So the. Stretch point is right in. Here.
Destin: What are you telling me to look at?
We say, see the. Gap, these gaps, these numbers.
Oh, I see.
Going down through .107.
That's the thickness of the material.
Thickness. The material in inches.
Thousands, thousands.
Hundreds and thousands.
I see. It's getting thinner.
0.097
Oh, wow.
Big steps.
.050
There's a lot happening right in here.
And we're we're gapped on the end to keep it from necking
Up back again.
Gotcha. So it's speeding up right here.
It's speeding up. Really? Fast. Really fast.
So from .100 to .050 we've doubled our speed right here.
More than double this.
Our ratio is usually around three and a half.
What is this?
Those are those rollers. They grab the edges.
That's how you're grabbing that.
Can I touch it? Sure.
So that's what you're grabbing on. Wow.
And this is a draft about.
It's got just a little bit of a taper on it, doesn't it?
Yeah. Yeah, because of
those ribs.
But it's just trying to form
contact with the rim so it doesn't dig in.
Destin: Gotcha. That's cool.
This is a cooling section we call the sheet
There's no stretching going on in here
because then we're going to hit some of these full.
Face rollers.
To transport it from here into the next stop.
So there's a roller in here that we have under high tension.
This is the tension of all things.
We're pulling very hard, and that's what causes the stress to happen.
Got it.
When it gets up to temperature. Gotcha.
Destin: Yeah, because you can't push it.
You've got to pull it, Mark: right Right. Destin: Got it.
Mark: so Destin: that's interesting.
So the tension is pulling through the stretch,
That's weird.
And the stretch point by pull harder.
I can move that stretch point around.
So it's pretty important to keep that tension where it is
and keep that amount of heat that's going in there
be relatively constant because the heat source,
those rollers, it's obviously okay stretches to that place.
That's straight up crazy. You're pulling taffy
and you're controlling where it stretches pretty much.
But that's. It. So so the speed is past that.
There are no rollers. I got it. I'm with you.
What are we doing here?
So we're getting ready to stretch in the other dimension.
So transferring. Transferring.
Okay.
Might call it the same direction as back there.
This is correct.
Lateral lateral correction or crossword.
Mark: You can't
see it, but there are two very long chains
that one's on this side and one's on the other side.
All right.
And the chain is just rotating, going round and round.
And you can see there's things that we call.
We call clips, and there's almost a thousand of them.
That's a clip counter.
The numbers would go up to, like, 980.
And then I'll turn over.
But the clips are attached to the chain.
And as the sheet comes into the clips.
It grabs it and the moves.
We have a cam that knocks the clips closed
and locks out to the edges.
And as we're going to do the same thing in the tentor here, we're going to heat up
to see and it's going to stretch it diverge out.
These cuts are going to diverge out.
And Widen out and stretch the sheet.
How do you keep the the film from stretching in the middle more than the outside.
You have to heat it up uniformly so that heat
transfer in there is important and how we do that.
So you guys are wizards?
Yeah. Yeah, sure.
You're a wizard.
Yeah, you're right. It needs a mark. Okay.
So you can see here, we're about 16 and a half inches wide this number right here.
And we're just through this section.
We're just adding heat tentor
So we're adding. Heat at this point here.
Still 16 and a half.
16 and a half inches wide.
We're going to walk down here.
Okay.
We have a bit wider.
An eighth of an inch.
Yeah, not much We're just basically trying to keep touch on our wall.
All of a sudden we're 38 inches.
Wow. So we've had a lot of stretch happen in here.
What's happening.
Here? It's 60 inches.
So we're full width. That's.
That's our full width.
So from there to there,
you stretched it with wise all it's going to stretch, right?
Once it stretched, we take it up to a higher temperature.
It's called a heat set.
And we have to lock that structure, that molecular structure,
and stretch the two ways that you got molecules.
Now, it's going to be a
and intertwine like spaghetti.
You know, it's all mixed up
and we take it up to a higher temperature and we lock that crystal structure in.
And you have molecules that are lined up length wise and width wise, and that's that
that's that
tough PET
property that you get And then we're going to cool it down
once we get up.
Destin: And so it's shrinking in dimension.
Mark: Because actually, yeah.
Destin: Contracting because of thermal properties
Because of that, because the thermal properties
that we also when we release over here, we don't want it to be too tight.
We don't want a lot of tension on there.
Otherwise we'll throw chips and stuff like that.
So we let it relax just a little bit.
Destin: Oh, it's a lot bigger here.
You could see it's a lot wider.
And we still have that thick rib on each edge
Okay.
But we're releasing these clips and there's this chain with the clips on it.
It just heads on back to the other end and just continuously
rotating around, opening.
And closing clips.
Destin: That's amazing.
Oh, no way. This is there. Goodbye ribs.
Goodbye, ribs.
Sharon: That's right. Material we recycle. Everything.
Destin: So this is where we cut the ribs off. All right.
And so that's awesome.
Sharon: And then we.
Remove that material that goes right back into.
Destin: The I feel I felt emotionally attached to the ribs at this point.
That's pretty neat. Mark: They serve us well.
Destin: Yeah, they did. So is this an x ray.
Yeah, it's a nuclear device.
So what you just said a radioactive.
You just hand waved a nuclear device.
It's said, trust me.
Destin: It's amazing.
Okay, so.
Mark: So you might be able to see it better here.
So this is measuring the thickness?
Yes, it's measuring the surface. Non-Contact
and it's feeding back to the dye.
We've got some heaters back at the dye
that we'll tell from the information that gets here.
Tell us to we'll.
Well, a little more material here or any little less material over here.
Destin: Okay. So this is feedback all the way to the beginning of.
Mark: The feedback, all the way back to the beginning of the day.
To that dye.
Really? Yeah.
Sharon: That's a very sophisticated piece of equipment.
That's very.
Yeah. Okay.
So this deserves a pause.
So here we are.
We're after stretching.
We're after Tentering,
we're after cooling.
We're after cutting. The ribs.
So this part of the process way down here minutes later,
this is feeding back all the way to the beginning
and telling that dye how to roll molten material on the wheel.
I get getting that right.
We're getting that right. Really?
And there's a bunch of bank computers in.
That, right.
And they adjust the heat
to let you know and feedback from the second oval enough
to get the right thickness
So that's that's a major, major part of this process.
Yeah. Yes, it is.
Laughing, to be. Sure it's here.
It's very cute
Destin: This is awesome.
So at this point, the material is this wide
and they have the ability to send it off to do several different operations
the material is sent upstairs where Mark showed me a coating station
where they can apply a coating to the full width of the product.
You understand this concept better than the next video.
There's a huge fryer.
They can
then send it through and then it comes back downstairs
where a bunch more operations are available.
They can knurl or emboss the edges, which apparently Sharon owned
several patents for.
They can also slit the film up to different widths if they need to.
There's a scanner in here, too, where we have where we look for defects.
So that's that's part of this and then we finally wind up the wall.
Destin: Can you show me where it winds up at the end?
So this is our scanner.
So a lot of this is small spots, little defects,
there's the scanner sees things, there's a laser
and some CCTV cameras that are expecting to see.
That's amazing.
So these are defects.
Those are little things that the scanner saw.
Those are very small.
And we have limits on how many of those.
These are feet. That's feet.
Okay, so this is huge.
It's a map, and that's with widthwise location.
So is it is it rolling? Is this. Rolling?
So it's scrolling to the right. Right.
It should be updated.
Got it.
The final step in the production process is to roll up the product.
But in order to do that, you must first use something called an accumulator.
When the roll gets full and you cut the product
to change it out for a new roll because the process never stops,
you end up making a huge mess.
And the time it takes to connect a new roll
to solve this problem engineers came up with a clever arrangement of rollers
that can be spread apart to magically by workers a few precious seconds.
This accumulator concept is amazing.
So it's hands on learning time. Check this out.
So this is the setup, and it looks pretty simple, but it's very, very complicated.
This is a motor controller and we're going to feed the material
into the product line right here with this can at a constant velocity.
Over here, you can see we have
what's called the accumulator it's a series of pulleys, cleverly arranged.
And on this far side here we have a take up spool.
And the thing about the take up spool is
I can vary the velocity that it is operating at.
Okay, so this is how we're going to do it.
And I'm going to show you all the different things
that come into play because it is fascinating.
So we're going to cut on the, the motor controller over here.
We're going to start playing. Okay. It must fall going in the right direction.
Okay, ready?
So I'm going to turn on the thing and when I turn this on
we are going.
To feed the line.
Through the entire setup at a constant velocity.
Everything is working, right?
So console velocity here, I have good tension here.
Good tension all through the system.
Every time I want to stop.
Stop spinning there, I have to take up that extra distance in the line
by pulling on the accumulate air and spreading it apart.
Now, see, I still have good tension here, but I'm no longer moving,
so I could change my spool out here or whatever it is I want to do.
And let's say we change the spool.
We have a new one on there.
And at this point
I want to keep my tension over there so I can start taking it up again
and then I could let the accumulator go back down.
It's doing it on its own.
Is this awesome? Is it's going back down.
And we are maintaining
a constant velocity here,
but at the same time we're still spooling it faster over here.
One thing I want to point out is one of the accumulator is moving.
You can see because it's stationary over there,
you can see that
string on the right is not moving, but on the left it's moving fast
because it's still the constant velocity of the production line.
That's fascinating.
And I got to.
Move my hand over here and start taking it back. Up
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah.
So this is cool.
I had no idea how this worked at first, but it's impressive and amazing.
And maybe we should go back to an animation.
Okay.
Think of it like a constantly balancing equation.
The velocity of the production at the beginning of the line must equal
the velocity of the accumulator plus the velocity of the spool
at the end of the line.
Having an accumulator in the system gives you the ability to slow down
and stop the product whenever you need to make a cut and start a new spool
The accumulator was a very difficult thing to film
because it was so huge and spanned several floors of the building,
but there was a smaller version up towards the front of the line.
That gives you an idea of what the setup is like.
All right, it's time to roll up the product.
I'm Destin. Steve: Destin. Destin? Yeah.
Nice to meet you Im Destin!
Bill What's up?
Nice to meet you, Bill.
Destin: So this is this is the final product.
This is the final product.
So they'll be cutting a roll here pretty soon.
This is our current speed right now.
Coming right off.
You have 260 feet per minute. Yeah.
So are 5500 feet. So we're going to back up.
Let's do your thing.
That's okay. We've got time.
So what we watch here
is we watch our take up, and that's.
That's very important.
So when it when it comes to a stop that's the accumulator.
You take it up, and that tells us how much time we have.
So I cut the roll by ten.
I walk out and there will probably be about 41%.
Okay.
Destin: And you take pride in keeping that number as small as possible.
Steve: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, yes.
Destin: Because that's your margin for safety on the process.
So you're 5680. What's about to happen?
Well, it's going to start slowing down
probably about 57 by about 5720.
Your red light is going to go on
around.
Okay. Yeah.
Destin: And so you had that label ready.
So this is the product.
Now we're coming to a stop.
So the red light went. On
and you keep an eye on.
This year right now.
That you are slowing down right now.
So you cut it with a knife?
Yes, sir.
Cut that section out.
You're starting a new one
At first, cut returns our sample.
So what's your accumulator percentage now? 31%.
That's because you're so good at what you do, right?
Do our best.
Is that a good number?
Yeah.
I feel like going about 45
Sorry.
No accumulator is coming down now because the accumulator is closing back up.
So you watch our speed here, too, and you see how our speed actually
increased so now that speed will start working its way back down to the 365.
368. Destin: Really? Steve: Yes.
Destin: That's exit line on the accumulator. Steve: Yes.
So the accumulator is just coming in fast
well, the accumulator is opening up again, slowing us slowing it down for us.
To be able to make our cut and then it has to catch back up to speed.
So it's going to keep going, it's going to stay fast
and then come down as it's coming, as it's coming back down
your speed is going to start lowering back to the line speed.
So ultimately, the line never changes its speed.
No, but you have to be at zero speed when you make that cut. Yes.
And so the accumulator buys you a few seconds to do that.
And then he has spin back up fast
and then the accumulator backs it all for you. Yep.
All right. Back to speed.
All right.
So now what do you do now? You got a full thing there.
Now, all those
We have already taken our one quality sample
to find out what our dimensions
are. Dimensions sheet cover are on our schedule.
Test schedule three calls for
we will take our appropriate samples that we need.
Are you the quality man for the bench?
These are quality guys.
Okay.
So far, to require
a third sample, which is called a keeping sample.
This is a sample that is kept upstairs
in stock in case
the engineers need to review the sample.
Or if or if so,
what was found by the customer that has a complaint or something.
They can say, Hey, can you look at this product for, say, this role?
And they'll go back and see maybe they maybe for instance, they hit a scratch
and we didn't see it,
but they had a scratch and they recorded, hey, we saw a suppression
order in one of our rules we that we bought from you.
I'll go back and look what they do from there.
I'm not I'm not sure because I'm not part of that
Yeah, that. But this is your domain here.
Yeah, but they use our, say, keeping samples as a as a reference.
Tell me about your knife, Steve.
It's see the famous knife
that's always been used from the beginning or cut for knives.
This is probably.
Oh, it's probably my fifth or sixth blade because after a while,
my time is sort of sharpening.
They start to go out and then they start to wear down on 5th or sixth blade.
How many years have you worked here, Steve?
In this building? About 21 22.
Are you telling me 20 something years?
You've had five knives. Yeah.
Yeah. Really? Yeah.
Is there a light curtain here?
Yes, there is. So don't go forward.
Got it right here.
Right.
Curtain line guy.
Right. Right now the latest green.
So we're able to go in here, but you can still see how it works.
Got it.
When we play this red, it's like a no go.
You will not go across there.
If you end up going across there,
it stops and stops the wind up Steve, it was awesome meeting you, man.
Thank you. So how do you get that role?
I will just pick it up and throw it on my shoulder.
Yeah. Is that what this bad boy is?
All right.
Each cart is set for a certain size of the.
core, too.
So you want to make sure that.
It fits under and you don't want to make sure that your core falls off.
How do you release the spindle?
What I'll do is right now, we're off.
So you stay right there. You start there.
There's a button back here.
So this one back here, I will lower this.
All right,
I'll lower this or sits in the cradle.
Oh, you rotate the whole thing. My other guy here, he'll.
He'll help me.
You know, we got it together, so we're working together.
So I'm reaching back.
He's he's pushing and pushing in.
And then we have.
We have over here to your right.
Yeah, there's a chuck, so I'm on A.C.. No,
you'll watch when I press the acorn button.
Oh, it's a cone.
Got it. Releases and it releases over here.
Also, because these are taught these are these are a different kind of a talk
show to the show.
So let's go say on it.
Yeah, yeah.
Both sides have to be taken out.
So I'm going to come. I'm going to swing out.
So you guys don't want to get hit?
Yes, sir.
But then it gets
taken out to what we call the roll room, and it gets packed
You're like, working here?
Engineer.
Oh, man, I love working here.
I love working period.
I can tell you I'd be crazy, but yeah, I love working here
So after this entire roll is manufactured and scanned for quality
for quality, it can then be packaged in what's called a casket.
These are large wooden devices that they use to ship this product around
and protect it from their it can be used for many different things.
It might be sent to a different building here at Kodak,
where it's turned into photographic film, or it might be used
to manufacture electronics.
It might
even be sold to an external customer and shipped out to a different location.
Did you enjoy that?
I really enjoyed the tour of the Kodak plant in Rochester, New York.
Remember, this is the first of three videos.
And so at the end of a video, there's typically like a call to action,
you know, subscribe or whatever.
We're not going to do that today. This is all I ask of you.
Please consider going in finding an old film camera.
It could be like a grandma drawer.
It could be like it's a thrift store and a yard sale, or find an old camera
and breathe new life into it and put a roll of film in that thing
and go out and just be creative.
It's it's cool because it's like it's for you.
It's not for the Internet.
You get to make a film photo and it's yours and it's really cool.
So I hope you'll check that out.
Also, there's two more videos here.
So this was making the support.
We've still got to put the light sensitive layer on there, the emulsion,
and we've got to cut that up and we've got to put it in the little film
canisters and it's really, really exciting.
Thank you for watching Smarter Every Day.
I'm grateful for your time.
I know you have a billion other things you could watch on the Internet,
but you're spending time here with me
doing stuff that I find interesting, and I'm grateful for that.
That's it.
Thank you to everybody that supports on Patreon.
I'm grateful for that as well.
I'm Destin getting smarter every day.
Have a good one. Bye.