Difference between red & black ball Heidelberg windmills?
Well,
I see there are red balls and black ball heidelberg windmills.
Besides the colour what is the difference?
I heard red balls is the prefered.
I have a chance to get a black ball one, are they still good to use????
I have one of each, both work the same way , the only real thing i can see different betwen them is the colour of the ball on the front handle, and the red ball one has a lever to pull to run thin paper
Ive been told most parts cant be used from one to the other though, they look the same but are not the same, im not sure if thats true though
I presume redball are prefered as there newer
Strictly a year thing Red balls are from the 60’s or later. But red balls came out after the big conversion to offset and had a easy life perfing & numbering mostly with some occasional printing, where as black balls were job presses that were run hard. But after Heidelberg quit makeing windmills they continued to market factory rebuilts, so there are some realy nice black balls out there.
While a lot of the parts interchange, heidelberg made improvments to the machine thru out the years. some of which are, the ends of the roller arms were changed to take bearings on the rollers, an additionl adjustment for the feed pawl located low on the left side by the pawl and later in the production run roller lockouts. I’m sure there were other deferences but I’ve been running new ones for so long I can’t remember the old ones.
Years ago I played very breifly with one that didn’t have the adjustable center striper finger, and while the newer ones say “made in west germany” and the older ones say “made in the us zone of germany” this one said “made in germany” oldest one I have ever seen, not a lot of fun to get paper thru.
Jeff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R49icqKicao