Month: December 2013

Monotype Air Tower Adjustment: Another Method

Having found that my patched-up ribbon would not run through my caster’s air tower because of the low clearance under the raised air bar, I tried a different adjustment procedure to maximize the clearance available for ribbons in poor condition.

Monotype Ribbon Repair

I only have one punched ribbon to test out the composition casting on my Monotype, and this ribbon is wanting in more than one way. For one, it was my first (and I hope only) attempt at punching a ribbon

Animated GIFs and WordPress

A while ago I tried to upload an animated GIF to this blog, and found that the upload would fail with an excessively vague error. This seemed to be related to the upload being an animated GIF. I searched for

Monotype Ribbon Feed Mechanism Animation

Well, I managed to fool WordPress into accepting an animated GIF so here’s the one I made of the ribbon feed mechanism being operated manually. It’s a little rough because the original pictures were taken with the tower lying on

Monotype Paper Tower Adjustments, Part 2

Once the operating rod for the paper tower is adjusted, there are four adjustments left, all affecting the Air Bar 2G, Pressure Bar 3G, and air feed. Two of the adjustments are on the Connecting Bar 4G that links the

Monotype Paper Tower adjustments

The book Casting Machine Adjustments provides procedures for adjusting the Paper Tower, but I find that these adjustments are given in the wrong order (later adjustments can affect earlier ones) and some of the adjustments are rote settings which may

One more home-made part for the Monotype

While refurbishing the paper tower for my Monotype caster I found that one of the pivot pins (part 16G, on which the locking pawl pivots) was slightly bent, and was nearly impossible to straighten properly. The bend was hard to

A simple vat for making medium-sized handmade paper

This is a vat we made several years ago when we started using moulds larger than 8½×11 inches. A local farmer sells used drums and barrels as a side business, so we purchased a 200L polyethylene drum with an integral

Monotype Ribbon Feed Mechanism

The other part of my caster’s paper tower that received a good cleaning is the ribbon feed mechanism. The ribbon itself is moved by two sprockets whose teeth engage in holes along either side of the ribbon. These sprockets are

Monotype Quadding Counting Wheel

This post provides a detailed view of one of the mechanisms in the Monotype paper tower. When the Quadding mechanism is engaged a notched wheel on the front side of the paper tower turns one position per cycle, and the

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