1 of 1- Eisenmann
- New Member
Offline - From: Germany
- Registered: 09-4-2014
- Posts: 4
IBM Selectric I erratic movement of the typeball
Hello everybody,
I obtained a IBM Selectric I from a friend (his landlord wanted to throw it away...). The machine looks fine at first glance, but when I switch it on, it either does nothing at all or the typeball behaves like one would press several keys at once plus the shift key. It types on it self until it reaches the end of the platten but instead of going back it just tries to advance further to the right. at the same time the ball goes up and down like I would press the shift key all the time. It does not sound or look healthy at all. I dont know anything about electric typewriters but i cant see any obvious damages. From the behavior I would suggest it is nothing mechanical?
Do you know anything how I should approach this problem? Or do you know anybody in Germany who is able to fix electric typewriters? I found some shops on the internet and will contact them but I doubt that the shops still exist or accept repair.
any help ist appreciated. I always fancied the selectrics and they seem getting rarer.
- M. Höhne
- Key Master
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- From: Maine
- Registered: 14-3-2013
- Posts: 637
Re: IBM Selectric I erratic movement of the typeball
The behavior is entirely mechanical; there are no electronics in this machine. Selectrics are notorious for requiring proper lubrication and the usual problem with new-found ones is dried lube preventing things from moving and/or releasing as they should. The very first step is a thorough cleaning but even this is not simple, because of the complexity, and the follow-up relube is also fussy. You are right to try to save this but it sounds like you should not be the one to try to fix it. An experienced Selectric repair person is needed, and these are different from other electric typewritesr, hence the emphasis on "experienced Selectric". Sorry, I don't know the situation in Germany.
- Eisenmann
- New Member
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- From: Germany
- Registered: 09-4-2014
- Posts: 4
Re: IBM Selectric I erratic movement of the typeball
Thanks for the reply. That does Not Sound good. Proper lubrication would mean disassembly and reassembly, does it? I am not Up for the Challenge atm
- •
Thread Starter- skywatcher
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- From: The Prairies of Alberta
- Registered: 14-3-2013
- Posts: 734
Re: IBM Selectric I erratic movement of the typeball
Hi Eisenmann
A good place to start would be to contact your local office equipment dealers and see if they may know of a retired Selectric repair technician who might be interested in taking on your machine just for something to do. Hope this gives you and ides,
Sky
We humans go through many computers in our lives, but in their lives, typewriters go through many of us.
In that way, they’re like violins, like ancestral swords. So I use mine with honor and treat them with respect.
I try to leave them in better condition than I met them. I am not their first user, nor will I be their last.
Frederic S. Durbin. (Typewriter mania and the modern writer)
- del20nd
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- Registered: 05-4-2024
- Posts: 10
Re: IBM Selectric I erratic movement of the typeball
It's something like three years later, but in case anyone else was wondering, the typeball going crazy and typing on its own sounds like it probably has something to do with the cycle clutch and restoring stud/trip arm/latch.
This is all detailed and diagrammed out in the Selectric service manual here:
This is the assembly directly to the left of the center hub when you take off the plastic guards under the carrier. You should see a spring and a stud sitting over top of a stud, which is attached to a trip arm assembly and sitting over a nylon cam.
The Selectric has a central shaft that's spinning all of the time waiting for user actions, which engage certain clutches and cams along that shaft and kick off operations. Without getting into too much detail, there's a cycle clutch that's supposed to get temporarily engaged to perform the action of detecting a single keypress to position the type ball.
When you hit the key, there's a latch that gets tripped out of its home position. That unlatching allows the cycle clutch to grab onto the center shaft and perform the actions necessary to detect a keypress and convert that into the proper tilt/rotation for the typeball.
This should, of course, only happen once per keypress, so the latch needs to be reset to its home position, so it can be tripped again to perform the next keypress. This is accomplished by the restoring stud. During the keypress operation, the restoring stud rides an eccentric nylon cam that's part of the cycle shaft assembly. That motion travels down the trip arm, and up a linkage which pushes the latch back into position, to wait for the process to happen all over again.
Anything gummed up or out of adjustment in that entire assembly could be your issue. If the latch doesn't get tripped then you don't get a keypress. If it's not restored then the cycle clutch stays engaged and keeps acting like a keypress happens over and over.
I'd probably start by cleaning and relubricating everything in this assembly, then looking up a phoenix typewriter video where he does the adjustments if that doesn't work. I think if you find the ones where he does the center hub replacement he does all of these adjustments, because you have to take the cycle clutch and trip arm assemblies completely out to do that surgery, and putting them back would require doing the adjustments.
Finally I think that the shift key is a red herring here. The shift key doesn't move the ball up and down, it rotates it by 180 degrees and that's a completely separate assembly on the right of the machine. The up and down motion could be the cycle clutch stuck in engagement.
