Messing up with Blick - second cork platen, new type elements
This time I took care to make the platen concentric. In the same style as original I made two separate axle pins, to be pressed-in and glued on both platen ends.
In my favorite typewriter-supply shop I bought thinner cork composite, just 1.5 mm. Turned the dowel accordingly.
With thin cork I skipped cutting 45 degrees overlap. Gluing went quicker that way and the effect is very good. Glue line is hardly visible.
It looks cool on Blick.
So did it make a difference compared to the old, hard platen?
Well, it did but on the wrong side, again.
Even so thin cork is too soft, letters dive into it deep enough to leave artifacts around, resulting in dirty imprint.
It’s never too late to give up but I decided to try a few more ideas before I dump this path.
To recap:
- I made a new platen to improve imprint from my custom type elements. With a bit more elastic platen hope was that “stamping” will work better.
- Elastic platen should also protect type element from premature wear. After all - it is plastic.
So the remaining problem is that type slugs dive too deep into the platen so that surrounding face of the slug is also printed.
How about reducing this surrounding area?
One of my original cylinders has these grooves separating each facet. I printed a new version, with Bernard typeface.
Did that do the trick?
No. A little better but not a revolution.
OK, so maybe I increase the height of these slugs?
Originally I made them stick out 0.5mm. If I increase extrusion to 0.7mm, will it print properly? And will that be possible to 3D print?
I tried.
It did 3D print OK, no problems here. But the imprint was only slightly better.
Small steps all the time.
I chatted with Leonard Chau who successfully printed many of these. He seems to print as high as 1mm type slugs, with additional curvature on them, to match platen curvature.
Well, let’s try that!
I increased extrusions on my CAD model and then cut them with platen profile.
As a result each type slug has a slight curvature on its face.
Very excited I run a batch of three cylinders, with Bernard, Fraktur and Harrington.
Harrington typeface prove to be too delicate for such high extrusion, some letters did not print completely. With Fraktur and Bernard all went fine.
So - did that finally made a trick?
No.
It turned out that this introduced curvature made the imprint even worse. It became very sensitive to cylinder (platen) position relative to the type element. It became too tricky to calibrate.
Moreover - with so high type slugs they became very susceptible to damage.
So I fall back to original platen and lower extrusions. I went through all my typing elements with different designs and selected these which work the best. They will be a benchmark for developing this further.
So far my most successful implementation is Fraktur: SW Gothe. It is very ornamental so difficult to read.
Nothing to type long letters to anyone we care about.
But if you don’t want them to answer - yeah, Fraktur is a way to go.
As for a casual typeface - one to be used for letter writing etc - I pause my work with Bernard. It seems to be too condensed and prints poorly on Blick.
I will instead focus on Harrington. It should be easy to read and at the same time it has intriguing features with its serifs. I will just need to make it more substantial for darker imprint.
But that most probably is dependent on ink, too. It’s obvious my inking has a lot to desire.
Chatting with Leonard we came to conclusion that oil-based ink can be an option. Hard to find these days as most applications switched to water-based inks. Water inks are not corrosive and do not deteriorate rubber.
But this is not concern for me as I make my cylinders from epoxy.
I’ll just need to take care not using original Blickensderfer cylinders with that ink.
They are made of rubber.
To be continued…