NEW55 Film Lettre d'information No 39

Bonjour,

Voici une nouvelle lettre d'information du projet New55 Film :

Dear Supporters,

A detailed account of the failure of the essential coated receiver sheet would be too long and too tiresome to completely tell, but in general:

1. The coating team developed a coating process late last year that works very well.

2. The coating team introduced that coating process on a small scale at a professional commercial coater and that works very well. This was used successfully in the first two weeks of production.

3. The coating team did a larger coating run using the same materials (checked carefully) and when this flowed into New55 production from the same commercial coater, it did not work. Production had to be stopped.

4. The time to rerun the full rolls of receiver sheet again would be at least 3 months and, given the fact that people need to be paid and materials need to be purchased, high costs would need to be met.

5. The team can’t do that again. Perhaps there are other ways to resume production, at least on a small scale.

6. A small amount of the good test material is available and a modest amount of some old Polaroid receiver sheet material are on hand. They could be used to fill a gap of a couple of production weeks.

7. This leaves the project with few additional options.

8. Some supporters have suggested they would be happy to get an instant negative-only version for their Kickstarter reward, though somehow we have to find out who would be on that list. Doing this would extend manufacturing activity, keep people working, and allow more shipments.

9. Our plan to sell some New55 PN alongside the Kickstarter rewards in order to finance the ongoing work is going to have to wait.

10. We have given the team two weeks to see if there is a way to maintain at least a modest production, but no clear path presents itself at the moment.

11. In about a week we will give you a report on the status of the project.

This week's activities will include many tests using various reagent formulations pushed past their original design. Activities will also include re-coating experiments by hand and with our own small coater to see if we can coat smaller rolls from scratch. Small scale in-house coating is possible now that the roof in the rear area is finally repaired (in February it had collapsed due to heavy snow and had to be gutted and rebuilt). And there will be an energetic investigation of the cause of the large coating failure. These activities of course are instead of production which is what should be occurring now.

We'll see how this goes!

As always you will be the first to know. Thank you for supporting New55 FILM.

Bob Crowley