1 - Robert Astle
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Brother Echelon 89 - Repeat Spacer issue
I own a Brother Echelon 89 typewriter. However, after recently taking it apart, a little, and then putting it back together, the repeat spacer key is not repeat spacing fully across the length of the carriage. It starts off well, but then slows to a standstill about two-thirds of the way across. Any ideas? The spacebar works fine, and I can backspace no problem. The carriage slides across in both directions without any problems. It just seems to be purely the repeat spacer key (function).
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance.
- Uwe
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- Registered: 12-3-2013
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Re: Brother Echelon 89 - Repeat Spacer issue
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "taking it apart, a little"? If it was working fine before you worked on the machine, the issue most likely has something to do with the work you performed. Did you have the carriage off the machine?
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
- Robert Astle
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Re: Brother Echelon 89 - Repeat Spacer issue
Hi, I'm sorry I haven't been able to post a reply for a while. I shall now endeavour to explain in more detail what I did.
I wasn't able to get the carriage off of the machine, though I did my best at trying. The repeat spacer was functioning perfectly before I decided to take it apart. The reason I decided to take it apart in the first place was just to give it a thorough cleaning. I thought the carriage mechanism could detach fully from the main frame; however, this proved not to be the case. I guess during the process of taking the side plates off, the bottom plate off, unscrewing the screws attached to the carriage mechanism, and putting everything back again, I must have unsettled something and now have a faulty repeat spacer function. When I manually try to slide the carriage to the left or right, I do meet some resistance (resistance that feels a little unatural to me) about the same place where the repeat spacer function begins to fade (about two-thirds of the way across).
If pictures would help, then please tell me what you'd like to see close-ups of and I'll do my best to post some tonight.
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Thread Starter- Robert Astle
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Re: Brother Echelon 89 - Repeat Spacer issue
On a side note, why isn't there any specific guidance out there on the Internet relating to my particular machine about, for instance, how to take off the carriage rail? Why can't I find diagrams of someone already having done this and showing you which screws to unscrew and how to take it apart? I think there's a niche market (demand) for this kind of thing. Of all the people who own a Brother Echelon 89, there must be a percentage of them who wish to repair or maintain their specific machine. So, one would expect to find specific blog posts, videos, or picture manuals, etc. telling you exactly how to do such things. I just don't know where to look, obviously. Any help in this department would be greatly appreciated. If anyone's out there with the same machine and willing to make one, I'll help if I can.
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Thread Starter- Uwe
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Re: Brother Echelon 89 - Repeat Spacer issue
Robert Astle wrote:
On a side note, why isn't there any specific guidance out there on the Internet relating to my particular machine about, for instance, how to take off the carriage rail?
I don't doubt there are Echelon owners out there who have removed the carriage from their machines, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they felt inspired to post a how-to on the internet. Take myself for example. I've had the carriages of many machines of all makes and models, and haven't as of yet posted instructions online on how to do so for a single one of them. Although there are often nuances unique to individual models when servicing them, there is still a core of basics techniques to servicing typewriters, and once you begin to become familiar with those basics you adapt to whatever machine you're working on.
This will be a difficult problem to diagnose without knowing exactly what you did, so I'd suggest retracing your steps, take off the covers you had removed before, and see if you can visually find the source of the carriage's binding. If there's enough resistance it would certainly cause the repeat spacer to stop at that point.
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
- Robert Astle
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Re: Brother Echelon 89 - Repeat Spacer issue
This is precisely the problem. I want to specifically know how to detach the carriage rail from my machine; however, with no specific guidance out there, I can't do it. You can't tell me because a) you've probably not worked on my specific machine and b) your general methods for removing a carriage rail won't necessarily apply to my specific machine. That's why I was looking for a how-to specific to my machine. I can't understand why specific machines don't have specific how-to pages that are collectively contributed towards by the owners of those specific models. It would make perfect sense to have such pages where people could collectively post how-to's for a specific model.
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Thread Starter- Robert Astle
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Re: Brother Echelon 89 - Repeat Spacer issue
Furthermore, without getting the carriage rail off, I can't actually visually see where it is getting stuck, in my particular case. So, I don't actually know what more I can do.
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Thread Starter- Robert Astle
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Re: Brother Echelon 89 - Repeat Spacer issue
This is a link to my YouTube video demonstrating the problem with the repeat spacer function.
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Thread Starter- M. Höhne
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Re: Brother Echelon 89 - Repeat Spacer issue
On a side note, why isn't there any specific guidance out there on the Internet relating to my particular machine about, for instance, how to take off the carriage rail? Why can't I find diagrams of someone already having done this and showing you which screws to unscrew and how to take it apart? I think there's a niche market (demand) for this kind of thing. Of all the people who own a Brother Echelon 89, there must be a percentage of them who wish to repair or maintain their specific machine. So, one would expect to find specific blog posts, videos, or picture manuals, etc. telling you exactly how to do such things. I just don't know where to look, obviously. Any help in this department would be greatly appreciated.
..... another post .....
This is precisely the problem. I want to specifically know how to detach the carriage rail from my machine; however, with no specific guidance out there, I can't do it. You can't tell me because a) you've probably not worked on my specific machine and b) your general methods for removing a carriage rail won't necessarily apply to my specific machine. That's why I was looking for a how-to specific to my machine. I can't understand why specific machines don't have specific how-to pages that are collectively contributed towards by the owners of those specific models. ...
You have answered your own question in the last sentence quoted above: you "can't understand".
You don't seem to realize that the internet isn't set up for your needs, it's not infinite and omniscient, and it's the product of many individuals' concerns, which so far haven't matched your concern exactly. The internet has had only about 25 years to collect the entire output of billions of people working for decades each. Meanwhile, typewriters had been dormant for 35 years so the whole time the internet was on the rise nobody was interested in typewriters. Factories discarded their documents before there was any apparent interest in them. On top of that, Brother typewriters are not very interesting; people who do work on typewriters work on the more ancient or exotic ones. Plus, Brothers don't usually need to be worked on---they are durable and reliable and fairly new. In fact, yours worked fine until you messed with it. Most people don't mess with them so they don't have to make videos about how to fix them. That's why there aren't any out there for you to find.
tl;dr The internet doesn't owe you.
