Gossen Tippa - office in a briefcase
This little gem came to me dusty and dirty but in working condition. Mostly. One obvious problem was that backspace was not working. After removing the ribbon cover it became obvious that the key is not connected to anything - the lever was missing.
I started with fixing that. Eyeballing the most convenient way to lead the linkage gave a shape as follows.
Linking spring-loaded key lever, under the ribbon spool post and into 90 degree pulley. It works perfectly so I think the original was, more or less, the same.
Another problem was dried and damaged type-arm rest. It was made of rubber, glued in place. I don’t think this is how it was originally, I would rather expect felt. Anyway, this was not doing its job - slugs were landing with loud “clack” and some of them were hanging above it. New and thicker landing pad was needed.
I scraped the old rubber and removed all glue. The L-shaped rail has four holes which maybe were used to hold the pad in place. I decided to use them that way.
I cut a stripe of synthetic felt which will be sewn into a half-circle pipe, making it thick and sound-dampening.
Saw by hand - relaxing job!
I put that aside - it will be installed once the machine is clean.
Removing the platen is pretty standard: starting from the right knob which is held in place with two screws.
Unscrewing two screws close to ratchet wheel frees the platen rod which can be then extracted with the left knob.
On the right the platen has a thick shim/washer which fills the space for tight fit. Good to pay attention and not loose it. To extract the platen one needs to unscrew paper bale and paper table first - pretty straightforward with just two screws. Paper table is held with a spring (on the right side) which needs to be unhooked. I leave it hanging.
Feed rollers assembly comes out right away, held in place with just two positioning pins. On my machine the rollers were in perfect shape so I just clean them.
Line advance ratchet can be a pain on some machines so, to avoid headache upon re-assembly I keep all in place with a bolt, in absence of the platen rod.
Dusting-off and cleaning followed. Luckily this machine was saved from excess grease or WD40. It had lots of stains, thou, which were sitting hard on crinkle-painted panels. With some surface-active chemistry I managed to clean them without damaging crinkled surface.
Dents and oxidized surface of the platen got sanded away on a lathe and cleaned.
Time to assemble all back. First comes new landing pad for type slugs. Mounted in place with black string through holes in the rail.
Rubber feet were gone - hard as plastic and flat as pancakes.
Unscrewed and pried out.
I made new ones - Biltema’s rubber set came to help, as usual.
I managed to disintegrate line advance mechanism upon re-assembly. It gave me a bit of headache to put it back together properly so here comes detailed pictures for anyone having the same problem.
With platen back in place I installed an old ribbon - to test type alignment. With faint imprint it is easier to see if cylinder needs adjustments. On my machine it was clear that it does need it.
I started with lower letters position. Adjustments screws are on both sides of the carriage.
For capitals there are similar screws on the back of the machine, both sides. Thin screwdriver is needed to access them through small openings in frame’s back panel.
Easy yet a bit frustrating process - after several repetitions I finally managed to get decent imprint and level for both capitals and small letters.
Next came additional adjustment: line level across the whole length of the platen. Done!
Lastly shift-lock position was adjusted. Tippa is a proper machine - it has adjustments screws for that so no need to bend metal (sorry: “to form metal”!).
Test-typing with old ribbon show nice, equal imprint. Time to install new ribbon and screw back the bottom plate. Last look onto the frame and easily accessible escapement.
And so she is done!
Tiny typer, much lower than matchbox!
;-)
Well, not really. Depends on matches but “benchmark” matchbox is of the same height as the machine. She is flat!
All panels are made of aluminum so the machine is lightweight. Not as light as its younger incarnation I fixed before but much lighter than Groma Kollibri.
Paper support /wi-fi antenna swings from the back.
Slick and very “technical” design. Left side features even touch control - two positions.
Back panel with dealer plate and factory logo. Aluminum, screwed in place.
Right side with ribbon wind/manual reverse knob. Automatic ribbon reverse is present, of course.
I like these small design details: here the line advance lever in erected position.
After engaging carriage lock the lever is folded down into storage position.
I would call this design “utilitarian”: there is nothing here which is just for beauty, all has its purpose. Triangles on both sides, with textured surface, are here to enable lifting the machine from table. She is so flat that there is really no other place for grabbing her.
Tiny and unobtrusive logo on the right - that’s the only ornament this machine bears.
She reminds me of other German machine of that era, equally flat and utilitarian.
Tippa has slightly bigger footprint due to its wide base-plate.
But both machines are super-flat ultraportables.
To be fair I should add that Groma Gromina should be used with its wooden base, she is not made to be detached from it. I added small rubber feet to Gromina to be able to use her without it but lap-typing is not advised while Tippa is very well suited to that, with its base fully covering the mechanism.
How is she then compared to younger cousin Groma Kollibri?
One can clearly see the spartan approach in Tippa, compared to curvy and flashy Kollibri but size-wise they are in the same league.
My machine came with its aluminum cover and leather suitcase.
Closed machine hides in the main compartment leaving place for necessary office utensils in the second compartment.
At first I thought that this is faux (artificial) leather, with these deep patterns embossed on it but upon closer inspection I think that this is indeed real leather. It ages like one and feels, too. I don’t think they had technology in 50-ties to make artificial leather so much resembling real one as we have today. And the case is surely original from 1955-ish.
Great article about Gossen Tippas by Robert can be found on his blog.
A scan of the original manual to the machine is available from Richard Polt’s web page.
So how does she type?
She types very well!
Compared to Groma Kollibri - much better!
Compared to Groma Gromina? Equally well, maybe a bit nicer. '
Compared to Antares Parva?
No, Parva is still my best ultraportable, Tippa being very close on the second place now.