Friden Flexowriter

I regard it as a sin to get anyone else to repair anything I own... This probably explains the number of service manuals I own, and the number of hours I've spent loking for that little nurgle that's flwon across the workshop. Anyway, back to the flexowriter. There are metal cvoers on the punch, reader, right hand side of the machine (where the carriage return drum and clutch, and the keyboard encoder contacts are, and behind the carriage over the relays. All those can be removed (Phillips head screws IIRC). You can stand the machine on its back (there are wheels and feet to do this) mad hten remvoe a couple of screws (may beven br thhumbscrews) and swing the complete encoder unit out. If you want to remove it totlaly, the shaft it pibots on is locked by a setscrew in the main body casting, I think it's a Bristol Spline ont. The punch and reader cables plug into sockets inside at the back near the motor. After removing those, the punch and reader units can be removed by undoing one captive screw in each and pulling them off. There is, IIRC, a leather washer that acts as a shaft coupling that's loose at this point, but that's the only problem. The receive decoder unit, rigth at the front under the keyboard, is held down by 4 screws. You then have to unhook the output links on this from the keylevers (IIRC, just lefit the unit towards the front of the machine. Then with it part way out, unoplug the coonectors inside and take it all the way out. All this is 'safe' in that there are no small parts or spring loaded parts to fly out. Unlike n ASR33 or similar, the keyboard on a flexowriter is mechanically linked to the typebards. You can't type and _not_ get local echo. So, provided the motor is running, the machine will print what you type, which makes it trivial to work out what characeters it can print. Ans while you can, I think, have a key that either doesn't print or doesn't send anything to the line, I don't think you can (sensibly) have a typebar that doesn't correspond to a key. in that the receive decoder actually pulls down the key levers corresponding to the incoming characters. So every character it can print will correspond to a key. -tony