Hi, I am working on cleaning and functionally refurbishing a British built Vandercook No. 4C. The press is complete and seems to be in pretty good shape – it mainly needs some cleaning work. While cleaning the cylinder racks I noticed a feature that I didn’t see on cylinder proof presses before: The cylinder racks on both sides of the press are split in two parts (Well, this is not new to me…). The back part is fixed. But the front part (towards the bed end) are moveable with a spring. (See Video)
Now I didn’t really find out why they are moveable? Isn’t that a problem for cylinder smudge while printing? I noticed that they are moving easily when tripping the cylinder. I found out that they are almost not moving when in “print”… (I haven been printing on this press yet, I am just in the process of cleaning it…)
Can anybody explain the exact function of these moveable racks?
Thank you very much.
Dafi Kühne
See the attached Video: Vandercook-4C
Dear Jonathan, thanks for that hint. I’ll go after that bearing next week! Thank you. Best wishes. Dafi
yup mine does te same-it is always a good idea to take them off and really clean off underneath and re-oil correctly, as crud/dust usually goes underneath…..
also if refurbishing, please ensure you re-grease the ink drum bearings, I know I go on about these,but they are the last thing that ever gets greased, but the most crucial cos the ink drum runs on coned male and female plain bearings, and you do not want scoring, uneven wear on these. I use car cv – joint grease, nice and light but greasy too.
This is the rack section which helps the cylinder transition to print mode. Standard at right end of bed on Universals, and at both ends on some SP20s (FU: 23905) and SP25 (FU: 23361).