It's part of a 80,000+ tape archive and might have even more tape to bake. My oven can hold about 100 tapes a batch, maybe more (never had that many to bake). I was trying to see how to streamline the operation but it seems that there are no corners to cut. Most of these tapes play well but shed a lot of white stuff and tests have shown that a little baking cures the problem. Each box holds 25 tapes so I will have to figure out a system where the tapes from 4 boxes go in for 8 hours (should be enough). Lots of work I agree. Some of it spoken word, later also music. Thanks :-) Shai On 1/9/2011 5:10 PM, Richard L. Hess wrote: > Shai, > > I agree with Mark and Tom. I had 114 reels in a recent project--and > the client was doing the transfers, I was only doing the baking. I had > to bake these for 48+ hours, so I gave them 32 tapes a week from the > baking process. With the exception of one reel of 3M tape, which they > returned and I baked for three normal batches...cutting down by one > the number of reels in the normal batches. > > I used two food dehydrators with 8 trays each. These were 1/2" tapes > on metal 10.5" reels. > > It seems as if you have your work cut out for you with that many tapes. > > Cheers, > > Richard > > On 2011-01-09 9:14 AM, Mark Donahue wrote: >> Sha, >> The real question here is: why would you bake the tapes prior to >> transfer? >> There is virtually no benefit to baking tapes that will sit back in an >> archive,as they will gradually return bake to their pre-baking >> sticky condition. If the reels are all pancakes, then we just flip >> them onto >> a flange to bake. >> Our workflow in this regard is to bake in small batches, just enough to >> transfer in the next day or two. That way the tapes have reached >> their most >> stable state for the transfer. >> If you have 15,000 sticky tapes to transfer, how long is the project >> going >> to take? If you haven't already done it, you should get a couple of >> decent >> sized process ovens, which will allow you to bake 50 or 60 tapes at a >> time >> and be able to monitor the temperature over long periods. >> All the best, >> Mark Donahue >> Soundmirror, Inc. >> Boston MA >> >> 2011/1/9 Shai Drori<[log in to unmask]> >> >>> Has anyone tried to bake tapes in the boxes? I usually bake them >>> outside >>> the boxes but now I have about 15,000 tapes to bake and taking them >>> out of >>> the boxes and putting them back in will be time consuming and could >>> make >>> for a switch between boxes and tapes. What do you think? >>> Sha >>> >