Back in November, I posted about a screw broken off one of our SP-15s, (I think it’s called a shoulder screw), the screw that holds up the L bracket that holds the bearing blocks of the form rollers.
The machine shop guy next door has been working on it for us, trying to get the remains of the screw out of the hole (see photo with red arrow pointing to the hole). He is making progress, but says it would be a LOT easier for him if he could take off the side piece, so I need to know what all would be involved in taking that off the press and getting it back on with everything adjusted correctly. (The cylinder bearers need adjustment anyway, but I have been putting that off for ages.)
Thanks, Paul. Both your solutions seemed pretty daunting. Fortunately, the machinist was able to dig enough of the broken screw out of the hole in order to get the shoulder screw (a new one that he made for us) to seat and hold. He is worried that over time the screw may work itself out, since it is not seated all the way. But for now, it seems to be working. I will check out Gerald’s article. Thanks again, and Happy New Year to All!
This will be an invasive procedure. To remove the sideplate, you will first need to disassemble all the horizontal tie rods, the oscillator and frame, top trip bearings, and the gripper trip lever. Then you will need a wheel puller to slide the sideplate (with the cylinder eccentric) off the shaft of the impression cylinder. Importantly, the carriage bearers can stay in place
You may be able to save a lot of work by just removing the L-shaped bumper plates on the end of the press bed and rolling the whole carriage off the bed. Make sure the the lower carriage bearings do not bear the weight of the carriage on the work surface. All in all, I would hope that the machinist can extract the broken screw in place. Please let us know what you end up doing.
For bearing adjustment read Gerald Lange’s article on this site: “Adjusting Cylinder Carriage Bearings Vandercook SP-15, SP-20, SP-25, Universal Models.” It also addresses adjust the top trip bearings.