Press and typeface identification
To all:
Not urgent; in 1957 I nearly went to work for a commercial printer in a suburb of a large city, as a lino operator. The press in ot my department, but he had a large platen press which had the ink disc in two parts, an inner disc which rotated in one direction while another part, like a halo, rotated in the other direction. I presume this was to give more-even ink distribution?
Alan.
it does distribute ink very well, my 10x15 c&p has this, a lot of printers removed the gear under the ink disc that makes it turn and discarded them, i have had a few 10x15s that were missing the gear so the whole disc turned one way but you could see the line where they turned the other way.
C&P did this on earlier models. Later they went to the single disk. There must have been a reason. Perhaps it was that they could construct and sell the press for a bit less.
I don’t recall the brand, but I have seen a platen press with three smaller counter rotating disks in the main disk. Someone thought that if one additional disk was good, three would be better.
Dick attests that the additional disk gives good ink distribution. The disk can be a bear to clean. This especially if you wish to switch to another and lighter color.
I have seen disks that have the inner disk mechanism removed and the groove sealed with epoxy.
I have a working split ink table on an OS 8x12 C&P (had to repair it). I can’t tell that there is any added benefit to ink distribution. But it is really cool to watch do its thing.
It does need some extra attention in cleaning and if you are not conscientious, the two will stick together when left unused for a while. Makes quite a racket when that happens and you try to start up the press.
I had an 8 X 12 C&P with split ink disc. Every time I cleaned the split disc I took the bottom gear off by taking off the retaining nut and gear, pushed the inner disc up and out, and cleaned both sets of edges where the two discs met. Never had a problem with ink contamination after that, and it didn’t take much extra time. If you do that, be sure you don’t drop the gear on the floor or it might break…..mine looked like it was just cast iron. When putting the gear back on, you have to rotate it to get it to seat on the ink disc shaft correctly, before putting on the nut.
Further to Geoffrey’s comment on dropping pieces of machine:
When you disassemble, put sheets of cardboard from packing cartons on floor; may save an unrepairable break; I wish I had done so a few times when overhauling other machinery, such as camshaft from car engine.
Alan.