1 of 1- sirius
- Touch Typist
Offline - From: Germany
- Registered: 12-6-2016
- Posts: 104
Olympia SM9: misaligned characters
So, I have this Olympia SM9 sitting around here since a while. I'd like to use it more, but the characters are misaligned vertically. The lowercase "s" and "a" characters appear below the baseline of most other lowercase characters, and the lowercase "l" and "k" characters above it. I haven't checked all other characters yet, but a page typed on this typewriter is quite hard to read due to the jumping letters. I don't really know how to approach that problem. Any hints are appreciated.
- steini
- Touch Typist
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- Registered: 12-4-2017
- Posts: 121
Re: Olympia SM9: misaligned characters
There is a way to adjust the hight of all the lower cases or all the upper cases at the same time, so if the lower cases are in general higher than the upper cases then you can move the lower cases up, all of them. It seems what you have is a selective misalignment, or few typebars that have been bent with time and use. The solution is to bend the typebars one by one, and apparently you need quite some skill and practise not to mess it up even more. Also there are some specific tools that are used for it. I would not personally attempt to fix it but it depends how familiarized are you with the typewriter repairing and how much risks you want to take to learn it.
- sirius
- Touch Typist
Offline
- From: Germany
- Registered: 12-6-2016
- Posts: 104
Re: Olympia SM9: misaligned characters
You are right, I have "selective misalignment". Even if I type all lowercase, the letters appear misplaced. It might well be that type bars were bent over time and use. I was hoping that there is a simpler option than bending each affected type bar one by one, but from your answer I see that there is no other way. Specific tools I do not have, but I guess I will try with whatever I have at hand. I don't have much experience with repairing, but I can perfectly afford losing the machine (my main driver is an Olivetti Lettera 32, on which I would never conduct such an operation). This SM9 is not a rare individual machine, it pretty much has the normal German standard configuration.
Should I try bending the actual type bar itself, or rather one of the small bars in the mechanism leading up to the affected type bars in the segment?
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