Interposers in Perforators
By Matthew Caulfield
In Digest 961211 Andy LaTorre mentions the interposers that are thrust between the punching ram and the individual punch heads in a production perforator, which govern which punches are forced through the paper traveling under the punching dies at any given rotation (cycle) of the perforator. He correctly says that the interposers are usually moved by pneumatics or perhaps solenoids. The QRS perforators use pneumatics.
I too visited Ed Freyer in Flemington three decades ago (and received the same generous and patient treatment accorded Andy); but I don't recall how his Acme was actuated in that regard, but I suppose it was pneumatically.
The point of this is to state that the Wurlitzer perforators were excep- tional in that the indexing rods that moved (or did not move) through the holes punched in the master being read were connected directly to the interposers, and that neither solenoids nor pneumatics were involved in the system. Each interposer extended horizontally as a long slender shaft, the opposite end of which was the so-called indexing rod, which rode on the face of the master cardboard, slipping horizontally into a hole in the master when the master called for a punching.
Of course there was the necessary spring-work to retract the indexing rod at the end of each perforator cycle so that the master could step advance, just as there is in any perforator the necessary mechanism to retract the paper punches from the paper being punched art the end of the same cycle so that the roll paper can be step-advanced under the perforating dies without tearing the paper.
If Andy does find his pictures, perhaps AMICA (who already, as mentioned, did a large piece on perforators) or MBSI would be interested in publishing them, with or without and accompanying text (Andy?). That way lots of us would have the pictures, which I would like to see. If not that, perhaps Don Rand would be an appropriate recipient.
Matthew Caulfield
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(Message sent Thu 12 Dec 1996, 15:38:10 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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