While using my Monotype Composition Caster recently, I’ve noticed that the pot temperature has been drifting. On several occasions I’ve found it to be quite a bit hotter than the setpoint, to the point where I had to select a…
Category: Equipment
Air Compressor for the Monotype Caster
I’ve been using a compact air compressor to run my Monotype Composition Caster. The machine uses pneumatics to control what matrix it casts, when to start a new line, how wide to make the adjustable-width casts, etc. Originally the caster…
Sticking Monotype Air Pins
Recently while trying to cast some fonts on my Monotype Composition Caster, I have found that the galley cycles did not operate reliably, forcing me to watch the casting run like a hawk to manually trigger the galley cycle to…
A Cool-down Drool on the Monotype
I have recently taken another Monotype mould out of mothballs to use for casting a font of 6-point type. This is one of the moulds I got from Rich Hopkins’ tertiary storage, i.e. his garage. I had cleaned off the…
Tagged with: Rich Hopkins
A Good Casting Day
After much thought about my problem with second shot, and with little help from any manuals, I’ve got my caster to behave properly. The second shot problem was caused by an incorrect adjustment in the pump crosshead and linkage area.…
Another Bad Casting day
Yesterday, I tried to cast another font of 12-point Caslon Old Style (Lanston 12-337E). The computer and pneumatics worked flawlessly, but the type kept misbehaving in the type channel. The caster seemed to be doing something known as a “second…
A Little Monotype Alignment Conundrum
I recently cast a font of 12-337E Caslon Old Style from a 15×15 matcase using my Monotype computer interface. Upon rummaging around I also found that I had loose cellular matrices for the quaints in this font. That would be…
Towards a better casting day
After analyzing the problems from my bad casting day, I’ve managed, with some success, to address all the problems (numbered to match the previous post): I disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled the mould, and checked the carrying frame height on the…
Solving caster communications the expensive way
During my Bad Casting Day, I was having problems with the communications between my caster computer interface and the 14-year-old Windows laptop I was using to drive it. They connect using a USB cable, and I thought electrical noise might…
More updated caster pneumatics
One of the conclusions of my Bad Casting Day was that I needed better regulation of the pressure of the compressed air which controls the caster operation. The caster has about 30 pins about 3/8″ (1cm) in diameter which must…
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