Windmill feeder blade catching.
Hello, I am new to letterpress. I cleaned up a red ball Windmill. I put it registration mode and turned the flywheel to to see if all worked well. Just to test it out. One feeder blade did great. The other one seems to have the bottom half of the feeder blade catch on I think the guide. I would like to know what to adjust? It does not catch when printing without guides. Thank you.
Hi, when running off lays the lay bar is disengaged.
Is the gripper hitting a bent register pin? But it sounds as if one gripper is bent. If you take off the packing and turn the press slowly until the gripper is over the platen, can you tell if the gap between the gripper and the platen is uniform end to end?
I did another test. I turned the flywheel by hand, and I have no packing in the press. I dropped the guides, but left the cam for the feeder blade to open before impression, and one blade (just the open bottom half ) is still rubbing on the press when it opens. Everything looks strait. I will get some help so that I can look more closely at it while someone else turns the flywheel. Thank you for your response.
I had a similar experience with one gripper clipping the packing at the top of the platen. When looking carefully I could see the gap under the closed gripper decreased towards the end. To level the gripper spacing I slacked the bolts holding the gripper and put a shim under one edge to level the gripper and stop the gripper tearing the packing.
I took the gripper off. Gave it a good look. It is bent two degrees, or something rather small. I will replace it.
Not sure where you are but if you can find a windmill engineeer they have a tool for straightening grippers.