Loosing up bearings and grippers.

Greetings everyone. I’m wondering if anyone has advice, pictures, and/or reference to the desired positions of the cylinder trip rack and the gripper trip lever assembly.

Earlier today I adjusted the bearings on my #4, following the great advice of other Vanderblog members. In order to reach the eccentrics on the non-operator side, I had to remove the steel plate that covers the trip rack. Once I had the bearings adjusted properly, I reinstalled the trip rack, but can’t for the life of me find the proper setting.

Possibly connected to this is the position of the gripper trip lever. I’m wondering how far out the fulcrum and the set screw should be for proper press operation.

Just when I thought my SP-15 problems were over, there’s another issue! I apologize for the length of this post, but I’m trying to be as thorough as possible.

I noticed that the press was inking rather lightly, but the impression was good and I had plenty of ink on the rollers. As I adjusted the form rollers I noticed that they were significantly higher towards the end of the bed (away from the feed board). Also, the gear that forces the geared form roller to roll was skipping in the track and would stop spinning shortly after engaging the teeth.

We started by trying to shim the track up. This kept the form roller spinning, but the height was still inconsistent front to rear. Next, we tried readjusting the side bearings – many times. This actually seemed to hurt rather than help. We adjusted the top bearings in trip and the bottom in print to a 0.004″ gap using an automotive feeler gauge, which I believe to be correct. We tried it the other way (adjust top in print and bottom in trip) and the press would no longer trip, leading me to believe that we were running into problems with interference due to the bearings being positioned incorrectly.

After we played with it for a while, we noticed that one of the form rollers sits too low on the gear side of the press and is unable to be adjusted any higher (there is a 1/4″+ ink strike on the roller setting gauge). The other side adjusted fine with a simple turn of the knob. We don’t think that the problem is with unevenness in the bed or bearers because a blind impression is consistently good no matter where we put the plate on the bed. This leads me to believe that the problem is isolated to the form rollers and the associated pieces.

Photos of the inking problem are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45293278@N00/sets/72157617411356816/

So, that’s my situation. Here are my questions:

1 – Is it possible that it’s a bearing adjustment issue?
2 – Is there any way to put spacers on the form rollers to bring the up to where they need to be?
3 – What else might cause the inconsistency in form roller height from side to side and from front to back?
4 – Could shimming the gear track have exacerbated the problem? Was it the correct fix given the problem of the gear skipping teeth?
5 – Is the bearing supposed to roll against the form roller on the geared side (photo at link above)?
6 – Is it possible that my bed or my bearers are uneven?

If you have any other ideas, that would help a lot. I’m fresh out and frustrated. Thanks.

Rachael

Hi, folks. I am writing about a damaged Uni I that I have been working on intermittently over the past 10 months. When the press was shipped to me, it was struck and dragged along the right-hand side of the carrriage. Obviously I’ve learned my lesson where crating is concerned but I cannot for the life of me get the cylinder balanced. Recently I had faked, so to speak, an even impresssion by dramatically altering the bearing settings but the press felt awful to print on and I imagine I was creating more problems for my self down the road. At present, I have removed all bearings, eccentrics, etc. and the cylinder is tilted high on the right-hand side and low on the left-hand side. My frame of reference is the smooth inner rail running closest to the press bed. In trip, the left-hand side is making contact with this rail. On my other presses, the proper distance seems to be roughly 1/8″ distance from cylinder to rail when in trip and drops down to make contact when in print. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
all best,
Patrick Masterson

I have had a lot of slurring today that I have not been able to get rid of no matter what I try. The ink looks really uneven too. I have brand new rollers and printed 2 jobs last weekend that were perfect. Nothing is different today except that my print looks horrible. After a few hours I realized that when in print the bearings that roll over the bed bearers were not rolling in certain areas. They always rolled back or when in trip. Right where they stopped rolling it became harder to roll the cylinder out. (I’m not using too thick of paper either or trying to punch too hard)I don’t think this is suppose to happen and have no idea how to fix the problem. I’m pretty sure that this is the issue with the slurring because my image is more slurred at the top of the print which is where the bearings stop rolling.Does anyone know what’s wrong, how it happened and how I can fix it? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!Amanda Thomas 

I’ve been working on and off for several months cleaning a Vandercook 4 that I purchased this summer. The press had been unused and in an Iowa garage for 5 years.

My problem: the cylinder carriage moves easily down the track in trip mode, but gets very tight in print mode once the cylinder trip rack (hope I have this name correct, I’m using a diagram from a different Vandercook manual) is in its uppermost position. I can print, but I’m really pushing, not rolling, the carriage. Once the trip rack is down again, the carriage rolls back easily.

I’ve cleaned and oiled and re-cleaned and oiled everything that seems related in the area, but to no avail. The upper roller (across the cylinder trip rack from the cylinder trip gear) rolls freely before the trip rack lifts, but not after, but I don’t know if that’s a problem or not.

I’d appreciate any suggestions for things to try.

Thanks! Sara S. in Iowa

At the Mass Art Press (Massachusetts College of Art), we have two SP15s. Both have what seems to be significant lateral movement in the carriage. When the carriage is rolled beyond the feedboard over the bed, the carriage can be wiggled toward and away from the operator by…oh…lets say 24-36 pts.. I’m assuming this is not a feature of the press and can be adjusted/corrected, but how? I tried adjusting the large nuts at the base of the carriage and near the center on both sides of the press and this did not seem to have an effect, but I wasn’t able to get much leverage on them.