Thursday, August 3, 2017 -- Monotype Super Caster Foundry Holder -- Mark 3 version
My Monotype Super Caster has an adaptor for the English Bridge, foundry matrices hang below it as shown. It is designed to do up to 72 pt matrices, 18 pt. is shown. The Display Head of the machine is raised about 3cm to accommodate the new holder and larger matrices than the square English sizes. The spacers used to raise the Head and Bridge are prototype (they are actually flat washers held together with green tape) and will be further refined to be more accurate and to accommodate different thicknesses of foundry matrices (the thickness of the foundry matrix is very critical). It is casting 18 pt. Hercules originally from the Plantin-Moretus Foundry. Music is a very moving piece from Osiris Saline (Memories From a Dead Star)
Sept. 29, 2017 -- Take a close look at the small bolts holding the bridge up, they are now in the scrap heap as we were able to source 2 3/4" long 1/4"-24 fasteners, not a standard bolt thread today and too long to find in my Monotype scrap bin. To get the prototype going, I found some shorter Monotype bolts and welded them head-to-head with some standard 1/4-20 fasteners.
An engineering comment about English Monotype fasteners is in order. It appears that right from the start English Monotype machines used North American (American National) standard threads (NC & NF) with the 60 degree thread pitch developed by William Sellers in the U.S. around 1864. They did not use the 55 degree Whitworth thread pitch that was prevalent in England at the time; the Whitworth threads were the first thread standards in the world, introduced in 1841 but were more difficult to produce consistently compared to the American National threads.
It is an interesting connection that John Sellers Bancroft was a nephew of William Sellers and at one time worked as an engineer at William Sellers & Co., he was actively involved with Lanston Monotype. As a manufacturing comparison in England, the Triumph motorcycle plant did not convert their designs away from Whitworth threads until about 1969. Before that, there was also a nasty shock in England during the 'Lend-Lease' program prior to World War 2 when it was realized American machinery sent over did not have "English" fasteners.
However, for many casting machine fasteners, Monotype chose not to use the coarse or fine thread, NC or NF, but a thread pitch in between. Many of the fasteners are hard to find elsewhere and are almost unique to Monotype; a good scrap bin of parts and fasteners is helpful. In the early 1980's when English Monotype introduced the Photosetter, they changed the specification to the Unified Thread form (UNC & UNF).
Note that the 1/4"-24 thread size is popular with Harley-Davidson; I was told that fasteners with the standard 1/4"-20 NC thread tend to vibrate off their motorcycles and the 1/4"-28 NF thread is too fine to tap into aluminum without issues; so 24 threads per inch it was.
Thursday, August 3, 2017 -- Monotype Super Caster Foundry Holder -- Mark 3 version
My Monotype Super Caster has an adaptor for the English Bridge, foundry matrices hang below it as shown. It is designed to do up to 72 pt matrices, 18 pt. is shown. The Display Head of the machine is raised about 3cm to accommodate the new holder and larger matrices than the square English sizes. The spacers used to raise the Head and Bridge are prototype (they are actually flat washers held together with green tape) and will be further refined to be more accurate and to accommodate different thicknesses of foundry matrices (the thickness of the foundry matrix is very critical). It is casting 18 pt. Hercules originally from the Plantin-Moretus Foundry. Music is a very moving piece from Osiris Saline (Memories From a Dead Star)
Sept. 29, 2017 -- Take a close look at the small bolts holding the bridge up, they are now in the scrap heap as we were able to source 2 3/4" long 1/4"-24 fasteners, not a standard bolt thread today and too long to find in my Monotype scrap bin. To get the prototype going, I found some shorter Monotype bolts and welded them head-to-head with some standard 1/4-20 fasteners.
An engineering comment about English Monotype fasteners is in order. It appears that right from the start English Monotype machines used North American (American National) standard threads (NC & NF) with the 60 degree thread pitch developed by William Sellers in the U.S. around 1864. They did not use the 55 degree Whitworth thread pitch that was prevalent in England at the time; the Whitworth threads were the first thread standards in the world, introduced in 1841 but were more difficult to produce consistently compared to the American National threads.
It is an interesting connection that John Sellers Bancroft was a nephew of William Sellers and at one time worked as an engineer at William Sellers & Co., he was actively involved with Lanston Monotype. As a manufacturing comparison in England, the Triumph motorcycle plant did not convert their designs away from Whitworth threads until about 1969. Before that, there was also a nasty shock in England during the 'Lend-Lease' program prior to World War 2 when it was realized American machinery sent over did not have "English" fasteners.
However, for many casting machine fasteners, Monotype chose not to use the coarse or fine thread, NC or NF, but a thread pitch in between. Many of the fasteners are hard to find elsewhere and are almost unique to Monotype; a good scrap bin of parts and fasteners is helpful. In the early 1980's when English Monotype introduced the Photosetter, they changed the specification to the Unified Thread form (UNC & UNF).
Note that the 1/4"-24 thread size is popular with Harley-Davidson; I was told that fasteners with the standard 1/4"-20 NC thread tend to vibrate off their motorcycles and the 1/4"-28 NF thread is too fine to tap into aluminum without issues; so 24 threads per inch it was.