Hello!
I have two pictures (pictures below) of a piece that is grinding on my vandercook 219. There are fine metal shavings under the press after about an hour of running. I see no way of adjusting this to lift it up.
Any suggestions?
Pictures:
Nick
Here’s another view of the settings for the pulley–again, the pulley is held in place vertically on the shaft by a set screw;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53177163@N00/4317455827/sizes/l/
Fritz
Looking at the prints again, it appears that the gear box on the X-458 assembly should be fairly full of oil, hence the oil cap X-459 showing on the drawing:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53177163@N00/4317286086/sizes/l/
and the level of this oil should be checked to make sure the several gears within this box aren’t running dry.
I dug through a bunch of blue prints and it appears this pulley, made out of 2 halves of a top part, X-402, and the bottom, X-401, is made from cast aluminum, so a split pulley. The stem of bottom part fits into the stem of the upper pulley, and there are grease grooves cut into the shaft part of the top pulley, and that was greased at the factory and most likely, these have never seen grease again. The pulley thus changes diameter because of the spring and I speculate that this keeps the proper tension on the drive belt. This is part of the X-458 Gear Reduction Unit Assembly that was used on the 219 and 32-28 and 42-28 presses. The shaft that the pulley rotates on has the spring and a cap piece on the top that holds the spring in place. The shaft X-408 is called Small Pinon and on the end opposite from the spring it has a gear machined on the stem–this gear is hidden within the lower part of the assembly. On the pulley end there is a keyway milled in the stem. In the bottom pulley casting there is a set screw that will hold the bottom casting in a fixed position on the stem, and there is a key way also milled in the pulley stem, thus a key in the keyway keeps the pulley from rotating on the shaft and the set screw positions the pulley on the stem/shaft.
Take the cap piece off the stem (5/16 x 18 screw), remove the spring, slide the top pulley casting off the shaft, locate the set screw on the bottom casting and reposition the bottom pulley. The stem had a machined step at the correct position to position the bottom pulley, but something appears to have worn down. The stem rotates in a top and bottom ball bearing within the case (bearing X-2620) and I suspect at this late date, a disassembly of the entire gear box and replacing of the berings and lubing of the gears is probably warranted. This is a complex assembly and to access all of this, the bed may have to come off and now we’re talking major surgery. Given enough time, I’m sure Vandercook could have made this even more complex and difficult.
I see that Rich Polinski has given you the same advice on letpress. I do think you can loosen that screw and lower the pulley. Unfortunately, I don’t half access to this model to see where the grinding is happening. I’m looking at the manual, but it doesn’t provide enough information for this assembly. I’ve told Fritz about this thread and also the 219 Power owners listed in the census. Hopefully, some of them can shed light on this issue.
Is this the top set screw that you’re mentioning? I should loosen that? column is on top of the piece that is scraping, and the scraping is under that. Any more description would be incredibly useful!
It looks like the pulley has worked up its shaft. Look for a set screw on the collar. If the power off, you should be able to rotate the pulley by hand to find it. Loosen to push the pulley downward and retighten.