My shop power has gone out and likely won’t be back on until tomorrow. I was in the middle of a job, of course. So now I’m trying to clean up.
1. How can I clean the main ink drum? It won’t move by hand. If I just let the ink dry overnight, can I use acetone to easily clean it once power is back?
2. Can I put a little putz pomade on the ink rollers and leave them overnight?
I’m using oil-base inks.
Thanks.
Update: Power is back and all is well as of 10:30 tonight.
Some anti-skin spray might be a good thing to keep on hand for the future. Turns out I’d done a pretty good job of cleaning off the drum. I did a secondary clean after the power went back on and it just took a couple quick scrubs to remove the rest of the ink.
It would not have been any big deal to leave oil-base ink on the drum overnight. Type wash, acetone, white gas would take it off easily, and even blanket and roller wash might do it with a little more scrubbing. You wouldn’t want to subject the rubber to that, but metal cleans easily.
Believe me, with my 325 the inking system is unseen behind the cylinder under the feed table, and I’ve forgotten to wash up more times than I care to admit. I also keep a can of overnight spray around, sometimes called anti-skin spray, for when there isn’t enough time to finish a washup.
Thanks. I took off the front panel and cleaned it as best I could, getting my hands in the clean-up drawer area and pulling solvent-soaked rags back and forth along the side I couldn’t reach. I figured I could probably release the set screws on the drive shaft and that might allow me to turn the drum but I didn’t want to get into it and risk causing more problems. As you know, I just fixed that whole thing!
It’s not perfect but far better than leaving it fully covered in ink. Everything else has been fully cleaned.
Obviously I missed that your inks were oil, but I would still suggest the same thing. If you leave it overnight you will have your work cut out for you tomorrow.
If your ink is rubber based and you haven’t added any dryer, you should be fine to leave the drum until tomorrow. I would suggest you clean everything else today. If you have to you can likely take off the panel that protect the area where the chain is to get better access to the drum. With more exposed, you should even be able to turn it by hand.
DGM