Those pesky gripper arms

Am printing coasters, 3.5” round, medium weight from American Coaster.
Gripper bars make an indent into the coaster. Someone said that the Original Heidelberg had rubber pads on one side of the gripper bars. I see no evidence of this. Can anyone confirm same?
Have used electrical tape, to no avail. Now contemplating crafters foam sheeting about 1.5mm thick.

Any suggestions?..The adjustment of the spring in the center of the whirling arms seems to make no difference, nor does adjusting the ball rods attaching the bar to the opening mechanism.

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Do you have a C&P? I’d hand feed them.

Daniel Morris
The Arm Letterpress
Brooklyn, NY

It’s better to die cut the coasters after printing when your using a Windmill. It’s going to leave a mark or as the saying goes, “thats going to leave a mark”. I’ve run coasters without the lay guides and they printed pretty good, 1 color, can’t depend on accurate registration with two color.

Yes, the Windmill gripper arms did come with a thin rubber strip on at least one side of the gripper arms. I recall it wearing off of my arms years ago. It was thin, but spongy and could likely be replaced by some thin tape of some sort. If I recall, the rubber packing sample bound into the Windmill manual is just about the same material.

Also - Paul Aken showed me a neat trick for doing two color coasters as Christmas Ornaments - he drills a hole in the coaster and uses that to both hang the ornament as well as to pin-register the colors on his hand-fed platen..

- Alan
http://ExcelsiorPress.org