Heidelberg Windmill Blackball Condition

your serial number is located on the table where the delivery is, all the way to the right, a black ball is usually made in the 1950’s. its hard to tell the condition of the press from one photo, although it looks pretty clean.

If you follow a line down from the g on the silver name plate (guard) it is in the rust on the flat unpainted deck on the right

you can check for wear with use the only bit a buyer can really do is wind the platen up till its closed at the impression point and see how bad the gripper assembly head drive is , with as mentioned, the platen closed take a hold of the gripper that is upright and go to one side of the press and not using brute force see if you can rock the gripper back and forth (really its side to side but you are standing to the side of the press for this reason ) if the arm doesnt move more than 1\16th then the head has at least been looked after and would indicate that the rest probably has too because there are only manual lube points there so someone bothered with oil! if it does move a wee bit more then you will have to replace a pawl (easy job ) in the head itself . .you can try to rock the inkroller arms but again you dont need brute force you feel any wear easily in a knock ! you are not looking for wear in linkages but if you look at the pick up unit look down at the button you push in to feed a sheet just below it to the left is the vacuum release cam see if it has a shim holding it off the body . Sometimes it will be as rough a bodge as you ever get to see ,a 2pt lead squashed under the bottom edge . Look at the pawl on the feed table lift mechanism see if the rod that connects it to the sensor bar on the feed board is screwed right out (a good 1” ) and if it has the adjuster on the feed lift wheel a sort of slot with a sliding pointer with a single bolt for adjustment ,is it set right over to card ? Other than that just check that you are able to get a shim of at least 3\32 under the gripper when it is halfway across the surface of the naked platen surface aand that the arms are not bent . One last quicky get the platen ink roller arms to the middle of the bed sort of halfway up . put a rod through the roller holder at the end of the arm and see if you can pull the inner arm out and that on release it goes back in quickly and to the point it should as indicated by the obvious marks on surface , repeat with the other arm too . the rest is cosmetics !

I don’t see an oil drip pan so I would be curious as to how much it were oiled. He may not have used it much but oil still seeps from these machines if oiled regularly.

I would also be curious on how much suction the pump has.

Good Luck.

WINDMILL.jpg

Ok so am too thick to do the picture thing !!

I dont have a drip pan either ! I use chainsaw oil it stays where i want it but i still have Drips !

Thank you very much for the feedback. This is fantastic!!. I will let you know what I find. The idea of using chainsaw oil is great. Could I use the chainsaw oil for a Chandler & Price (new style) ?
It would be a little less cost.

Thank you again

Richard

you’ll need to consider the electrical requirements also. Heidelberg made three different drive motors the run the fly wheel. theres a 240 3 phase, 240 & 120 single phase.

looks like might of had an issue if that much ink dried on the cylinder… just make sure it works

This one has a 240/220 single phase motor so the wiring will be “easier”. I did wonder about the red ink but it may be that it was used for numbering only so he didn’t change the colour.
I imagine with a bit of elbow grease it can be cleaned (?)…hopefully

i just use a 30 wt. non detergent motor oil to oil all my equipment, it seems to stay longer than regular oil, Peter, chainsaw oil, that’s brilliant, never heard of that one, its funny i keep my chain saw and the oil for it behind my kluge, i never thought of using that oil before, i think it should work even better than non- detergent, thanks for that. Richie, the ink should not be a problem to remove, most lazy printers (like me) use rubber base ink that can be removed pretty easily, if its oil ink, thhen you will have to work a little harder at it. you can get a small can of glaze remover which will make a easy job of removing dried ink, wear gloves and be careful, the fumes are strong.

Dick uses rubber based ink so he can leave it in the duct for week at a time ! If it stays on the chain like it does ot will stay in a bearing ! chainsaw oil pump is a crappy device and if that can pump its oil so can the heidelberg !