Distribution roller for Old Style Gordon 8x12
Howdy,
I just wanted to share our solution for inking problems we’ve been having with our press. We used an old roller with some morgan expansion trucks atop the two printing rollers. Thanks to the expansion trucks sitting directly on the delrin trucks below, we were able to precisely adjust the tension between the rollers so that there was just enough contact. This third roller is clipped on using some home-made brass clips, and of course removed after every run so as not to dent our good rollers. And with a couple of washers on either side of the distro roller, it stays perfectly put throughout the run.
Now our ink gets spread on the disk way faster, and our prints are showing way less ghosting and more even distribution. I would highly recommend this to anyone who has had issues with inking on their old-style gordon, as we saw first hand how difficult it can be to get just two rollers to handle large area prints.
Read the blog post and see photos:
www.birdwalkpress.com/blog
pretty good rider roller setup, make sure its held in place very well, if that roller pops out you could break the press very badly.
Thanks. It’s on there incredibly snugly… in fact that’s why we needed the expansion trucks, as it was pressing quite firmly into the other rollers. Now there’s a perfect amount of tension and really great coverage.
Is the rider roller you are using the same diameter as the other rollers? Any clearance issues?
Nice quick and dirty solution.
I have actually been looking into machining something similar- but by making bearing blocks out of brass and capping the ends of the roller with them, and using magnetic force to attach instead.
Michael- yup, same diameter. The modified roller assembly clears the platen by about an inch at the closest, so there’s still plenty of working room.
HeavenPress- that’s a great idea. Keep us posted, as I’d love to see how it ends up working. Sounds far better engineered than mine, but it gets the job done for now.