Josh

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I've noticed that prints from French labs (LTC and Eclair mainly) never have lab-printed cue dots. As a result, they tend to accumulate multiple sets of 'do it yourself' ones pretty quickly, sometimes including holes punched in the film. But of course prints made in French labs tend to be arthouse titles if they make it to the UK, and it is precisely the arthouse titles which are most likely to be run with changeovers.

At the drive-in, we had Ashcraft Super Cinex lamps, and used rotating National 11mm x 20 inch High Intensity carbons (L0109) for the positive, and 3/8 x 9-inch copper clad Orotip (L1124) for the negative. Sometimes used Lorraine carbons for the negative. Typically ran at 115 to 120 amperes. We got about 3 reels (1 hour) per carbon. Estimate we put out over 15,000 lumens for "scope" format.

But, if you looked at the screen, you would say, "ooooo- look at the cool colors".

Paul

Did you ever use couplers in your old booth?

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If the spent coupler does not fall away, about the only thing you will see is just a sputter or two. (they do that, anyway from time to time). If the coupler gets hung up on the carbon feed, that is when you say, "Oooooo, look at the cool colors"

Gordon, yes. The 13.6 Black Stick you speak of is the best! No scrap!

We used 11mm rods and could never find a way to join
them in a way that would work properly.

The 11mm black stick - lots of scrap. I don't think there was ever a saver made for those because of the water-cooled positive contacts. It would have had to be something like Gordon was talking about.

I would never recommend running a saver coupling on the negative rod of the "Black Stick" lamps because of the roughly 45 degree off-set the negative rod has. If the coupler was to break away, it is big enough to bounce around on the lamphouse floor, and maybe land on the mirror and cause some damage.

Actually, it is not a good practice to do it on any lamp. We did it because we were just plain cheap!

Paul

Although, we could get our pos rods down to
about 2" or so, basically, the width of the
water cooled silver "jaws", it still seemed like
a big waste of carbons.

Back to Cue Marks:
I have a cue marker made {when?} by a projectionist of old from
a brass screen-door hinge, drilled and soldered with pins so that by
clamping it onto a strip of film it, with one snap it punched FOUR
perfectly-aligned tiny holes through the upper-right corner of four frames. Much faster than twirling a Pharo cue-marking stylus four times in its casting, and without the dust the Pharo created.