64 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
64 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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fontfamily: tgtermes
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title: "A Desktop Contact Printer for 16mm Motion Picture Film"
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documentclass: article
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author:
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- name: Matthew McWilliams
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affiliation: sixteenmillimeter.com
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email: hi@mmcwilliams.com
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abstract: |
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This paper introduces a design for a small-footprint contact printer for copying 16mm negatives to print stock.
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This design can be manufactured using 3D printing and assembled using hobbyist electronic components, metric bolts and standardized aluminum extrusion.
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All of the design documentation, models for manufacturing and software are to be released freely and openly for public consumption.
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It aims to fill a need for small-scale production capability presented by artist-run film labs and individual filmmakers who are working with analog motion picture film.
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bibliography: sources.bib
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csl: citation_style.csl
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---
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# Introduction
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The contact printer as a tool for filmmaking
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# Motivations
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The use of 16mm film and other small gauge formats has reached a new equilibrium where it is no longer used in mid-to-high budget productions aiming for distribution and many duplicate prints.
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Large production companies still use analog movie film as a capture medium but a vast majority of them go to scan.
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Filmmakers that make prints for projection are a different population of people than 100, 50 or even 30 years ago--they make shorter films, they use more alternate techiques and they are working with more limited resources.
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Creating a contact printer that is useful to and usable for artists working *now* means acknowledging that they work at a smaller scale and with different requirements.
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Contact printers for working with shorter lengths of film and with a small footprint have been made previously, but not for many years.
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# Design Philosophy
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The RepRap project [@reprap-philosophy] and
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The RepRap project is not a perfect foundation on which to base the entirety of the design of this contact printer.
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The conclusion drawn by Adrian Bower--an engineer, not a philosopher or historian--that Marxism provides a correct diagnosis of Capital but it's solution is the "all-time worst-idea in human history" [@reprap-philosophy] is both ahistorical and works against the entire purpose of the project.
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Contact printing, as a means of film production, benefits more people by shifting from a mode limited to a class of professional film lab operators to a more accessible capability available to artists and artist-run film labs at a sub-industrial scale.
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# The Contact Printer
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## The Drive Motor
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## The Lamp
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## The Takeup Motors
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## The Electronics
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## The Firmware
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### References
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---
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refs: |
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::: {#refs}
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:::
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... |