A-minima 100ft magazine by ALCS

[Aapo Lettinen]

My A-Minima magazine project is moving forward now. Working on a newly made magazine which allows using standard aluminium 100ft daylight spools with the camera. Should have some kind of prototype in September and the final mags shipping before Christmas. I may post some 3d printed examples in August already when tuning the design.

Price depends on how many ordered and when they are paid for. Preordered ones are considerably cheaper and preorders will help improving the finishing quality so highly recommended to contact me early on if interested in ordering these magazines. Approx target price for preordered ones is 2.5k or something like that.

I will probably make one batch of preordered ones and maybe later on next year one extra batch which is more expensive, about 30% more expensive probably. Will try to keep the price under 3k in any case.

They will be cnc machined in any case, made mostly out of aluminium and aiming for very good price-quality ratio. 

I should have possibility to make 400ft core load mags too if preordered very early on but they would be much more expensive than the 100ft. I would estimate from 4k to 5k price for the 400ft as it needs advanced electronics and more cnc parts and film testing.

Dm here or on instagram (aaplet14). Facebook messages don't work

[Luis Hartmann]

Curious how it will turn out, thank you for continuing to innovate and improve!

[Robin Phillips]

will the film still need to be re wound with this solution? 

[Aapo Lettinen]

2 minutes ago, Robin Phillips said:

will the film still need to be re wound with this solution? 

the new magazine uses normal Kodak aluminium daylight spools for both feed and takeup so there is no need to rewind film. just load a factory 100ft roll and takeup is on similar 100ft daylight spool.

people were worried about the availability of original 200ft A-minima spools so I will skip that original plastic spool system entirely and make the magazine use the boring common 100ft aluminium spools everyone else uses including the Bolex and K3 people 🙂 

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if needing the 400ft magazine version there is very limited time window for ordering, need to know in July2025 if it is needed and partially paid for in early August so that I can start making it at the same time than the 100ft version. If missing this time window the possibility to make 400ft is lost or even in the very best case someone would need to send their own camera to me for 3 or 4 months for additional testing and design work if losing this possibility to develop the two mag versions side by side

[Robin Phillips]

21 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

the new magazine uses normal Kodak aluminium daylight spools for both feed and takeup so there is no need to rewind film. just load a factory 100ft roll and takeup is on similar 100ft daylight spool.

people were worried about the availability of original 200ft A-minima spools so I will skip that original plastic spool system entirely and make the magazine use the boring common 100ft aluminium spools everyone else uses including the Bolex and K3 people 🙂 

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if needing the 400ft magazine version there is very limited time window for ordering, need to know in July2025 if it is needed and partially paid for in early August so that I can start making it at the same time than the 100ft version. If missing this time window the possibility to make 400ft is lost or even in the very best case someone would need to send their own camera to me for 3 or 4 months for additional testing and design work if losing this possibility to develop the two mag versions side by side

thats great. will make the a minima much more usable

[John Rizzo]

Just so you know Kodak is now switching to plastic spools on the 100 ft loads.

[Aapo Lettinen]

I have some paid orders now and the project advancing now. Hoping to have a working prototype of the film transport parts in mid August and first version of the outer shell of the magazine in late September. Final ones will ship in November-December.

The current customers are rental houses so I am targeting very sturdy construction and easily serviceable parts. 

Details of the film transport are only shared with paying customers because the project is not finished yet and don't want to publish all my design ideas at this stage. When the final ones are shipped can post some video of the final design.

Will post photos of the outer appearance of the magazine and film tests etc when having them available in September

[Aapo Lettinen]

Ordering deadline for 100ft A-minima magazines is 10th February 2026.

If wanting fully assembled full quality mags the deadline is strict as I need to test them individually with the camera. Later orders missing the deadline would get unfinished magazine which needs manual maching and adjustment before can be used. 

Prices apply to orders paid for before the deadline. Higher pricing for later orders and as mentioned manual finishing needed if missing the deadline and ordering too late.

Should get first cnc parts soon to continue with the prototype. The goal is to have usable prototype in January so that I can order all the parts for the whole batch in early February

[Aapo Lettinen]

It is still possible to order the 100ft mags from the first batch but very limited quantity available, I am sending the rest of the parts to machining around 20th February so all orders need to be in before that and they need to be fully paid for to avoid delays with machining orders.  The first batch will be around 10 magazines out of which 8 are already sold, thus if wanting to order these it is advised to contact me asap. 

I can make another batch at some point in 2026 if there is enough orders. These are rental house oriented products which are expensive to make so I won't make extra ones and they need to be preordered.

There has been some interest towards the 400ft magazine version but no paid orders yet. If you want the 400ft version, please let me know as early on as possible because I need to start the project in May latest to be able to design it.

[Geffen Avraham]

Any pictures?

[Aapo Lettinen]

1 hour ago, Geffen Avraham said:

Any pictures?

I chose to only send pictures to the customers who have partially paid their order to prevent some of the design choices being copied too soon if I would publish them. Mechanical designs attract too much wrong kind of attention, I want my money back from the project first before publishing anything 😅 

Likely will post lots of videos in April. Maybe something in March already but probably will remove some details from the early images

[Aapo Lettinen]

I will likely make public tutorial videos about servicing the magazines so likely there will be very detailed material available in May or June. At that point would have the possible second batch orders collected so would not be such a financial risk anymore to reveal how they are made

[Colton Feldman]

I am interested and I messaged you about a 100' magazine, waiting to hear back, thanks

[Aapo Lettinen]

Ordering for the 1st batch of A-minima magazines is already closed, I am ordering cnc parts right now. It is possible to order from 2nd batch already but the price is higher and they will be delivered somewhere around July - August 2026.

On 16th March I will finally start building the large NPR motor batch, assembling 1st batch of A-minima magazines and other stuff so will likely stop reading messages for about 2 weeks to concentrate fully on assembling work, between 16th March and 1st April.

In early April I will continue normally, taking further orders for Summer2026 batches and the 2nd batch of A-minima magazines and some NPR and Bolex motor models.

Price increaces on most products will apply from 16th March onwards. Typically something like 20% increase is expected on most products. Looks like I will still keep USD pricing in April but will calculate new higher prices to counter inflation and the Trump wars which affect parts prices. 

the price for the 2nd batch of A-minima magazines will likely be around 3200 usd for one magazine, 5000 for two. 

[Aapo Lettinen]

I have possibility to assemble "intermediate batch" of 100ft magazines in May2026. 

they would be 2800usd a piece with shipping and need to be paid 30% before 15th March and the rest before 15th April. 

The mags from the intermediate batch are not fine tuned individually with a camera so they would need maybe around 30minutes of work with your camera to work perfectly. This is pretty easy to do, I just don't have possibility to test the intermediate batch ones with camera body so the tuning needs to be done by the customer.

The Summer2026 magazines will be between 3000usd and 3200usd a piece depending on how early they are paid for and would ship between June and August depending on machining and assembly schedules. Payment would be in two parts, with 30% in April-May2026 and the rest before 15th June. The Summer batch ones would be tuned here with a camera as it would be large enough batch for me to rent a camera body for one day for the fine tuning.

[Aapo Lettinen]

Smaller parts of the first batch went to cnc machining now. The first batch is the 10 magazines I pre-sold earlier, if someone wants to order from the intermediate batch you can send the order this week. These are preorder-only magazines, it costs too much to make extra ones as the whole magazine is cnc machined from aluminium and stainless steel and is thus expensive to make.

The magazine design has changed from last week and I evaluated it can be made to work with core loaded film too if changing the film platters and adding a special core adapter. the different platters and the core adapters would cost about 500 euros extra per magazine.

[Ben James]

Hi Aapo

I sent you a message on Insta (i think as you're not my friend it wouldn't show) - I'd love to order one of these if it's still possible? my insta is @benevansjames

 

[Kevin Staub]

Hi Aapo!

i sadly only found this thread now! I would also be interested in buying some of these magazines! Let me know if I can buy some.

Cheers

Kevin

[Aapo Lettinen]

It is June now which means that new partial payment plans are not possible to get anymore for any normal products which have lots of cnc machined parts. This A-minima magazine belongs to that category too, so can only be ordered if paid in full when placing the order. I have possibility to make another batch in August-September-October if there is orders but the price will go up in couple of days from current 2800 to 3000 and might rise further in July

[Aapo Lettinen]

A-minima magazine availability:  I am assembling the first batch at the moment for 5mags shipped in June and another 5 in July.

Frankly speaking I hate the project for being so difficult and expensive with trillion redesigns having to throw cnc machined parts worth thousands of bucks to the garbage bin (lost about 5000 bucks so far). I get more revenue from other projects and want to discontinue the A-minima stuff as soon as possible, it is just not worth it to keep it available for long.

I promised to allow extra orders in June-July2026 for August-September2026 batch but after that I will discontinue the project (and maybe throw the cad files away never wanting to see them again if having any more of these extra costs and setbacks with the project) so absolutely not possible to get later than August-September2026. If you need the A-minima 100ft magazine, please follow the project actively and place the order immediately when seeing the first magazines are shipping to ensure you will get the magazine from the last batch. The parts are so expensive that if missing out the order deadlines and I have already made the cnc orders for last batch then it is not possible to get the magazine anymore (maybe for double price but probably not even then)

[Uli Meyer]

On 2/13/2026 at 8:25 PM, Aapo Lettinen said:

Likely will post lots of videos in April. Maybe something in March already but probably will remove some details from the early images

Hey Apo, out of interest, did you ever post any videos?

[Aapo Lettinen]

14 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

Hey Apo, out of interest, did you ever post any videos?

sent some videos to customers but did not publish anything yet. I intentionally did not publish any specifics of the design until it is fully finished.

I now finally got the new spindle bearing design working correctly so can start finishing the outer casings and ordering first aluminium versions of the outer casing. The previous spindles did wobble too much but these new ones are stable. Very difficult to make such incredibly flat and small diameter spindles with good enough bearing design but now can finally move forward.

Got a test batch of ABS plastic drive platters too, they are much lighter weight than the normal aluminium ones and will make tests which ones are best. I already have a full batch of aluminium platters made, originally chose anodized aluminium to avoid static electricity but I will make some kind of testing instrument to monitor static discharge during the camera tests and decide then if the ABS platters are good enough. Probably will include both type of platters with the magazines if possible.

 

[Aapo Lettinen]

I calculated that I can still offer this 100ft magazine during this year but the price goes straight up to 3500usd a piece and might calculate new pricing for next year if there is still possible to order these then. So a 1000usd raise compared to the original preorder pricing for single mag and close to the 4000usd preorder price for two magazines. 

This is because I need to ensure on all future orders that I can still complete the magazines if needing to order the parts one at a time which is insanely more expensive. I can't order most parts in large enough batches to get economy of scale discounts anymore, it was way too risky for me. There was so many issues on the first batch that I don't dare to take any more risks on expensive cnc parts, ever.

It also makes it somewhat possible to offer some kind of limited partial payment plans still because I can just put the whole order on hold if the next payment part is not paid in time and it would not ruin other people's already-paid-in-full orders.