Firing up old printers

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10/20/2015 04:18 PM, drlegendre . wrote:
> I thought Fedron was the go-to solvent for the printing / ink industry?
> It's also used to clean rubber parts, iirc.

I demurred on Fedron as it contains xylol.  Some print heads have 
plastic parts and I'm not sure how it would affect those--it's also a 
paint/lacquer solvent.  Same situation for toluol.  Alky seems to be the 
mildest of the lot.  Freon TF would, of course, be my choice...

> Interesting point about the single-side vs. trad. cloth ribbons. I'm using
> a cheap-o replacement in my Panasonic "Quiet" Color KXT 24-pin (NLQ). I
> don't recall what ribbon was in it when it arrived, other than it was
> totally shot. I only use black ribbons, the color are no use to me - and
> terribly expensive.

The film ribbons are single-pass only--there's a supply spool in the 
cartridge.  Once the supply side is gone into the stuffer box--it's 
gone.  I've found that plain IBM typewriter film ribbon works to refill 
the HP-style carts.

I don't care much for multicolor ribbons.  They're great on the first 
pass, but then the colors get contaminated with the ink left on the 
printhead.  After awhile, the yellow turns to a dirty yellow color.

--Chuck