I have had a continuous problem with the Vandercook 215 form rollers dropping down too low due to the hex bolts working themselves loose. We tighten these by hand because with a wrench, they get too tight and the rollers won’t turn freely. Is this an indication that there is something wrong with the bearing blocks? We have nyliners in place, too. For years I have just accepted this as press aging, something to be watched from time to time, but I’m hoping there might just be a cure. Any help appreciated. I have photos if that would be helpful.

hello everyone,

i have a 215 ready to print – soon as i figure out how to adjust the height of these rollers. i don’t have a manual, any other press i’d used have knobs at the ends of the rollers but this model doesn’t have anything so obvious. looks like maybe a hex key at each end of the rubber rollers? anyone know?

thank you,

sallie

Hello! I recently had my rollers recovered for the first time, and am having trouble screwing in the retaining screws in the shaft. The screws worked fine previously. Any thoughts?

Hi Folks,

I have a question about the roller-gear for a Universal-I. I recently purchased a pair of new cores/rollers for a Uni-I. However, when they arrived I noticed the new cores are different from the existing cores/rollers, and thus the old roller-gear cannot fit to the new cores. The old core is hollow and has a inner small rod, while the new core is completely solid. Here is a comparative photo (with a larger version on Flickr).

- Roller (A) is the old back roller with the gear removed.
- Roller (B) is the old front roller with the bearing block removed.
- Roller © is a spare that shows a hollow core. (Same as A and B).
- Roller (D) is the new core/roller (solid metal core).

Here is the old/original roller-gear:

Here is a photo of the complete old core and gear:

My question: I’m now looking for a roller-gear that would fit the new solid core (D). Should I be looking for a Uni-III roller-gear that has a larger hole compared to the original Uni-I roller-gear?

Any advice/guidance would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Regards.

/thomas/

Would like to know if anyone as a similar press. I am ready to get the rollers recasted and i am a bit anxious about the proper diameter. My guess is 2 1/4 or 2 1/2.

The carriage set at the lowest setting is approx.: 1.9375 (height from the bed to the middle of the roller core).
The carriage set at the highest setting is approx.:
2.5 (height from the bed to the middle of the roller core).

The diameter of the ocillating roller is 1 5/16 a bit different from the 2 inches of the pre-1928-Composing Room Cylinders brochure.

Any ideas or infomation would be welcomed.

Alain

So, as some of you may remember, I’m restoring an SP20 currently (yeah, I know, I should be done by now… but I’m not.)

Well, I’m finally having the rollers recast, and I noticed something yesterday I thought I’d pass along.

I was cleaning the gunk off of the ends of my cores to send out, and found that they not only had original grey Vandercook paint on the ends, but one end had been stamped I-I-74. (It could also be 1-1-74, but they sure look like capital I-s to me.)

Some quick research tells me that they aren’t the parts numbers – but then what are they? Were the rollers cast on New Years Day of 74?

The press itself dates from 1962, an early SP model before the leaf springs in the trip.

Forgive me if this is actually uninteresting – every core I’ve ever seen has been ground within an inch of its life or scrubbed, dropped, and nicked beyond recognition. It’s nice to see something that’s been all-but-untouched for 30,+, +, + years.

I’m hoping they survive recasting in good shape still… I want to show them off!

kyle.

I have had some inking issues today. Some passes were ok, while in other passes, inking of the type on the form was uneven. I noticed that the back ink roller, the one that hits the drum, was having trouble with its gear/clutch not aligning properly on most passes (see photo). The front roller gears aligned just fine. I tried several fixes, including taking the collar off and putting it back, making sure that the allen screws were in the right place and the collar at the correct position. This did not fix the problem. I even switched the rollers and the problem still occurs with the back roller. Finally, I removed the washer that had been attached to the brass plate to keep the gear and clutch from clattering. The washer on the forward roller had fallen off, so this was the only difference I could see between the front and back rollers that might cause the back one to not catch properly. Didn’t help. Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks.

I purchased a Vandercook #4 about 2 years ago, which had been working beautifully until about a month ago. The roller gears have been grinding against each other when sitting idle. Here’s a link to a video showing the problem.

Vandercook #4 gears grinding

I would appreciate any help I can get. Thank you!

The University’s Vandercook 325A needs a new set of rollers. I’ve got the old cores, etc. but don’t know the proper dimensions. Also, does anyone have recommendations about where to have them recovered?

After much successful use, I had to move my Vandercook 4 proof press. In putting everything back where it is supposed to be, I have encountered a problem (actually several problems, but I fixed the sheared drift pin on the gripper foot lever as well as the sticking and bent grippers). After much scouring, I didn’t see a reference to the newest problem. The form roller that makes contact with the ink drum will not move. When the ink drum is rotating, the roller makes contact, but stays stationary. Thus, no ink can be distributed. I am not sure if this is a consequence of my having removed the cylinder to make the press lighter for moving. Is it possible that I did not index the cylinder properly, so that he gear teeth are misaligned? In general, the press does not look out of alignment, but I could be one or even two teeth off without knowing it. The other possible culprit seems to be the clutch assembly. I had problems inserting the bottom frame form rollers, they did not want to seat properly. The roller clutch trip was engaged, and in the way. I cranked the press a bit, the clutch disengaged and the frame dropped into place, but still no movement as it contacted the ink drum.

Any suggestions would be gratefully accepted, I want to get printing again soon.

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

I have a question about a Universal I hand press. The problem first became noticeable after setting the rollers to the correct height and printing for a while. The back inking roller gear will sometimes jump off the track when in print mode and make a terrible sound. We were able to replicate the problem by raising the roller by the gear and ‘printing’ with no ink on the press. There seems to be some wear on the track by the gear because of this problem. How do you think this could be fixed? Maybe the rollers, because of vibration, change height? Or can the rollers swell and cause this problem? The serial number on the press is 25748.