[pure-silver] Ilford 2150 machine emits Ammonia??

Dear List-Brethren,

me again and the new gizmo, my Ilford 2150 machine. I spent the weekend now screwing up several batches batches of developer and need psychiatric help. Let me explain.

I hooked the Ilford 2150 machine up to the water suply etc. cleaned everything and the rest too. Then I did the "automatic" rinse cycle of the machine. This basiclly means: you press the button and the machine fills all the tanks (dev. fix, rinse) with water. You then let it drain out and -voila- you have rinsed the thing.

When I did that, the machine emitted fumes of hydrogen sulfide in other words smelt like rotten eggs.

But that passed. Then I poured the concentrated developer and fixer into th tanks and again pressed the water button and the machine should then dilute everything properly. Basically this means, the tanks get filled till the sensors say "tank is full" and then the chemistry is at the right dilution, provided you have poured in the correct amount of concentrate.

The DEVELOPER then started smelling VERY STRONGLY (i.e. trenches of Verdun)= of AMMONIA gas. At first I thought this might be a function of something decomposing in the developer due to the high temperature of 35 degrees (Centigrader). Also to my dismay the machine filled the tanks too high and a LOT of fixer and developer ran out, flooding the whole damn darkroom. About 3 gallons of the stuff. So that settled Saturday night fever for me....mopping up the place.

Not knowing how my dilution etc. now looked for the developer and fixer, I threw out the chemistry and started again.

This time I made the chemistry up to the right amount of 14 Liters "ex machina" and poured it into the machines tanks. Made sure the sensors latched (they did) and switched the machine on and let water run into the rinsing tank. The developer and fixer did not get any more water added (i.e. no flooding this time) and I am sure they are now properly diluted. Evrything got heated up and the machine beeped that it was now ready for action.

Again the ammonia smell surfaced - my lungs are very irritated as I type- and the prints came out terribly pale, flat, very low contrast. I tried developing heavily exposed prints i.e. should be totally black, they were only very dark greay but NOT BLACK.

According to the ILFORD RTFM booklet such flat prints are the result of the developer being too cold (I measured and its precisely at the 35 deg. required) or the developer is CONTAMINATED.

Could it be that I am growing some bacteria or similar in the machine which causes ammonia to be produced with the developer? Anything else that can cause this? The fixer DOES NOT generate the ammonia smell.

I have tried two types of Ilford developer and one AGFA /(Multicontrast). Always the ammonia gas.

Does anyone have any idea of what can cause this?

Thank you so very much,

yours desperately

Love
Snoopy

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