The Monotype Composition Caster uses water to keep the mould and surrounding area cool, and the caster is fitted with two valves to control the water flow. The main valve just controls the overall flow. Most of the water flows…
Category: Equipment
Lanston Monotype Pump Cleaning
I recently tried to get strip casting working on my Monotype Composition Caster but gave up after several failures. One suspect was the pump; the strip-casting moulds use a different pump than composition and display casting, and I had never…
First try at strip casting
I have my Monotype composition caster converted to produce strip material—leading and rule—and this is my first try at running this setup. You can see the inauspicious results in my accompanying YouTube video. I am using a pump body which…
Trying out the New Nozzle and Strip Mould
I installed the nozzle I just made into the special strip-casting pump. This pump is a Lanston (American Monotype) pump and my caster is an English-made one, and one of the incompatibilities between these is the pump body size. Although…
Home-made Monotype Nozzle
I’ve been working to get my Monotype composition caster converted to casting strip material. I have a few moulds for this, the special pump required (with a different nozzle location), the pump linkage required to run this Lanston (American) pump…
A Home-made Monotype Display Mould Coupling Hook
The Monotype caster type carrier not only catches the type as it ejects from the mould and carries it to the type channel for final delivery, but it also moves the mould crossblock between its casting position and its jet-eject…
Mystery Matcase Solved!
Thanks to Mark K. Digre on the Letterpress mailing list, I think the mystery of the strangely-sized cellular matrices has been solved! The mechanism for using this matcase is described in US patent number 1079321. Essentially, the caster is fitted…
More Matcase Storage
Over the past year or so I’ve purchased more composition matrices and so far they’ve been sitting on the floor, in the way, in the boxes they were shipped in. Last week I made four more cases to hold them,…
Mystery Monotype Matcase
I have a matcase for Monotype composition casting that is a bit of a mystery to me. Some of it is easy to figure out: This case contains 14-point 175A Bodoni and 14-point 79J Caslon Bold (with french accents). I…
What was lost is now found!
Ever since the ATF conference in Salem MA in August 2014, I’ve been looking for the 49A matrix holder which I had brought to the conference to show around. This is a holder for using Lanston display matrices with the…
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