Hello,
I am helping a friend with a #4 who works in a space with a very uneven floor. His press has had the leveling feet under the press removed and it keeps slowly walking off whatever shims he puts underneath. Does anyone know the correct thread pitch for those feet? I can’t get in there easily to check it.
I’d love to order some good, heavy-duty leveling feet from McMaster Carr and be done with it.
Thanks,
Daniel Morris
The Arm Letterpress
Brooklyn, NY
Got this resolved. Looking at how high it is off the floor you can see why this was necessary. The slope of the floor means that the feed board end is on the ground and the other end is this high! This concrete slab was sloped for drainage.
The leveling feet are rated to 5500 lbs each and came from McMaster Carr. When Jon moves the press he probably won’t need them anymore, but for the time being they are going to make things much easier.
Thanks to all for their input- couldn’t have done it without you!
Daniel Morris
The Arm Letterpress
Brooklyn, NY
Paul’s specs are correct per the original Vandercook assembly drawing. But a hex head nut has to be used to lock the bolt in place, it shouldn’t just be screwed in and left without the nut to secure the bolt.
Fritz
Thanks for letting us know, Kyle. I will look for this on the next one I see. It may be standard for the SP25. My apology for making an unqualified statement. I find that some things differ from year to year on the same model and then there are custom specs. The learning continues.
Paul – are you certain that the SPs don’t have leveling feet?
I’ve just finished stripping our SP25 down to bones (except for the carriage) to repaint it, and I pulled four leveling screws out of its four feet. All are about 1″ in diameter (I could check the thread count tomorrow), and each has a locking nut.
Bolting a press to the floor shouldn’t be necessary. If your reason to do so is because it is creeping forward, simply place hard rubber under the feet. This should keep the press in place.
Presses with leveling bolts have them on the right end only. At the left end are two more holes for bolting the press to a pallet during shipping. SP don’t have leveling bolts, one is expected to shim to level and use the provided rubber pads.
just wondering of levelling out as before but then bolting to floor might be a better permanent solution??????
not sure if this practice recommended for Vandercooks
The original bolt is 3/4″-10 x 2″.
For those who’ve not familiar with specifying screws and bolts: the first number is the diameter of the shank, followed by the thread pitch (per-inch on Vandercooks), then the length of the shank (minus the head). Generally, the thread pitch is either fine or course, so one of two numbers for each diameter. In this case 16 threads-per-inch would indicate fine threads on a 3/4″ diameter bolt.
Course threads are specified for bolts fastened into cast iron parts, such as these bed feet. Steel parts may use fine or course threads, for example an 8-32 socket head cap screw, used to tighten the steel roller bearing blocks on SPs and Universals, is considered course. The fine equivalent, not used on Vandercooks, would be 8-36.