[352] in APO Printshop
The APO Printshop - now open for business, and safer than ever!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mitchell E Berger)
Wed Aug 17 13:54:28 2005
To: apo-printshop@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:52:58 -0400
From: Mitchell E Berger <mitchb@MIT.EDU>
Hey everyone,
It's with great excitement that I finally get to announce that we are
once again open for business! After a grueling saga of hounding people
over the summer to deal with repairs from the major leak in June, last
night, Len, Jen, Brian (<-- should get training!), and I moved all the
back office stuff back to where they belong. We also checked that the
press still operates.
In addition, the safety device from the press (a Reliance Platen Guard)
has been reinstalled. This item is estimated to have last been working
10-15 years ago, and probably would have prevented the last injury caused
by the press. It looks like a windowshade, and when the platen closes
against the chase, the windowshade extends upwards, knocking your hand
out of the way if it's still in the crush area.
It's been so long since it broke that we're unsure exactly what caused
the failure, but what happened was that the right arm of the windowshade
bent in two places, the mounting bracket that attaches that arm to the platen
chipped off the part that guides the arm, and the mounting bracket that
holds that arm to the rest of the press snapped in half. It's so old that
we can't seem to buy replacements anymore. I machined a shiny new replacement
bracket to guide the arm, a friend (Liz George) welded the other bracket
back together for us, and one of the staffers at the Pappalardo lab helped
me straighten out the arm.
There are now four new spots to oil on the press - there are red dots where
the ends of the windowshade arms go into the mounting brackets, and there
are two spots without dots where the arms slide along the guides of the
other brackets. These should get oil when you apply it to the rollers
before and after each run. You may also wish to run the press a bit more
slowly than you're used to until you get accustomed to having the platen
guard extending and retracting.
Be safe and enjoy...
YiLetterpressFinallySafe,
Mitch
