Adana eight-five mk.2 gripper arms
The left-hand gripper arm of my mk.2 Adana eight-five press is ‘sticky’ on the shaft so that it travels with the platen instead of remaining in the ‘at rest’ position until the platen rises to meet the gripper fingers and *then* pushes the gripper arm upwards.
The cam for setting the gripper is merely a circular disc mounted a slot-headed bolt that goes through the main frame. Rotating the cam appears to change nothing, save for the ‘at rest’ position of the gripper arm relative to the platen (see below).
The gripper spring is intact and works fine.
All terminology follows Adana’s labelled diagram apart from my use of ‘shaft’ in the first sentence, as this shaft is not labelled and named on the leaflet. By ‘mk.2’, I mean the second variant of eight five introduced in 1959/60 and manufactured until 1965 when the third variant was introduced (B.Richardson ‘The Adana Connection’, British Printing Society: Jubilee Series of Monographs, no.4, London, 1997pp.64-5, 96).
I have a mk.3 eight-five for comparison; with respect to the issue described above, it differs only in the cams being of very slightly diferent design.
The obvious next step *seems* to be to strip the fittings off the left hand side of the shaft but I’m reluctant to do this until I’ve sought advice.
The only relevant information in the Adana eight-five leaflet is the statement “27. The gripper arms should normally be set so that they lie roughly midway between the type face and the platen when the machine is open (i.e., when the handle is not depressed). For some jobs it may be useful to move the gripper arms nearer to the platen, and this is done by moving the cams on the side of the machine.”
Adjusting the cams as suggested does indeed alter their position as described in the leaflet - but the left hand gripper arm continues to be ‘sticky’ and to rise before the platen reaches it.
I’d be most grateful for any suggestions on how to cure this.
It sounds like two things are going on here:
1. Your main shaft is rotating: not that important in itself, but in both of my 8-5s the shaft does not rotate. I don’t have one to hand at the moment, but I think there are grub screws which hold the shaft in place.
2. The gripper arm is stuck on the end of the shaft. There is an oil hole (often ignored!) in the part of the gripper arm that goes over the main shaft; try some wd40 in there. The gripper arm is just a push fit over the main shaft and should be able to be removed easily to clean up.
Paul
Many thanks Paul! I’ll give that a go in a few days and post the results here.
Had time today to have a good careful look. The gripper arm was indeed stuck on the shaft. Took a good deal of effort to slide it off even after applications of releasing oil over the last couple fo days. The oil hole was completely choked up and needed drilling out. After a good clean of both the internal bore of the gripper arm and of the end of the main shaft with rag and oil, the arm slid back on with scarcely more than one finger pressure.
Decided to clean the rest of the press, especially moving parts, to the same standard.
Many thanks for your help Paul!