Hi! One of Virginia Book Arts’ Vandercooks (a Universal I AB P that was converted to hand-crank) has always had a difficult-to-clean ink drum* that would appear to be successfully cleaned by a printer post-printing session, but then randomly introduce bits of ink from past print sessions into future printing sessions (e.g. you’re printing with orange and suddenly streaks of blue appear from a past printer and mix into your ink). We used to deal with this satisfactorily by wrapping a rag around the end of a line gauge, and using that to gently poke along both sides of the ink drum (not too deep/not past the drum to where you can’t see from above) to get at any gobs or past crusted ink. (We never use the automatic washup mechanism, and I actually forget if this press has one or if only our other Vandy does.)
Since the press was moved to a new location a few months ago, it’s been much more regularly introducing past inks into one’s printing, and our old cleaning approach isn’t helping. We wonder if there is something that got jostled during the move (e.g. drum sitting too close to one side of its encasing, so more ink getting stuck and building up?). But we’re not sure how to check/calibrate for this, and doing our best at deep cleaning hasn’t improved the situation (we could very easily not be deep cleaning the ink drum correctly, though).
Does anyone have suggestions on what might be going on, or things we might try? Thank you very much!
- Possibly related: we were finding the drip tray quite full of press wash and ink which we though might(?) be getting picked up and reintroduced into the inking system. To control for this, we reminded our printers to avoid overinking, and reduce press wash by only applying to rag instead of directly on rollers. This hasn’t helped with the old ink reintroduction problem, alas.
- I’m going to doublecheck the ink drum core keeper mentioned in this post is in place.
- I did look at the previous question thread about SP-15 Ink Drum Lubrication as possibly relevant re:ink drum spinning freely; and am going to spend more time with Paul’s excellent 4th edition book to help understand how things are supposed to be working.
(* To make sure I’ve got that term right: by “ink drum” I mean the bottom-most roller in the inking assembly, a large metal cylinder embedded in the press bed that interacts as the ink reservoir)
Thanks again—we opened up the bed to see around the ink drum and there was a lot of hardened ink in there (plus a bonus strip of very old cleaning rag wrapped around a metal part then coated with hardened ink). I’m amazed the press was working as well as it was—e.g. we discovered places where there is apparently supposed to be a whole gap you can see through, that were filled solid with hard ink.
We haven’t finished cleaning, but pretty sure that’s going to address the problem…
Thanks so much, Paul! This is super helpful.
The drum well’s tight space makes it nearly impossible to keep it clean once ink and particulates accumulate. There’s very little lateral play of the drum due to the sprocket and the drum shaft collars. Removing the drum is accomplished according to my instructions in the 4th edition of Vandercook Presses, plus a method developed by Katherine Victoria Taylor for reinstalling the drum.