New typeshuttles for the Hammond - almost there

After printing and testing a lot of shuttles, it's almost there; the ability to create new typeshuttles for the Hammond typewriter :-)

The latest improvement was to finally get a new 10 mm wide ribbon, moderately inked with a nicely dense-weave - looked better than most new regular half-inch ribbons (usually over-inked and coarse weave). Wound on some new spools, tried this on the machine and the improved evenness of printing is immediately obvious.

This new ribbon does very well with the crisp resin-printed shuttles; this Hammond can now credibly type in Attic typeface. (But it does really need work on its feed-rollers.)

Especially the resin-printed shuttles are amazingly crisp, allowing for different typefaces to be clearly visible - any limitations on resolution coming from the ribbon and paper, not from the type. How well some typefaces come out in FDM remains to be tested, to see what the limits are of FDM for making shuttles.

The other major step forward was in FDM or filament-printed shuttles. The 3D models were modified to compensate for some of the limitations of the printing-process. In the below image the effect can be seen most clearly in the capital-letter 'O'. In the regular FDM-printed shuttle (1) the face of the 'O' is slightly curved inward, the letter will print top and bottom heavy. The compensated print (3) has this curving mostly removed - it is compensated for in the 3D model. The resin-printed shuttle (2) of course is pretty-much perfect without any artefacts - but harder to manufacture.

Having come up with a method to compensate for some of the limitations of FDM printing, also did a test with a standard (rough) 0.4 mm nozzle on the printer. Using a 0.4 mm nozzle would make printing of new shuttles much easier and faster. This experiment gave a relatively rough looking shuttle (4). Placed on the Hammond Multiplex typewriter - this shuttle actually does type!

That typing-sample above was done with the home-made ribbon with its un-even inking.

All 'flavours' of manufacturing technique now print legibly, but of course differences can be seen. The 'cheap-n-cheerful' 0.4 shuttle does print less crisp and the most 'costly' resin-printed shuttle is best.

The status of the slow project to create new Hammond typeshuttles is thus looking positive - most of the issues seem to have been solved and it should be possible to streamline the creation of 3D models for different layouts and typefaces - and printing processes for different qualities as desired. 

The angles and line-spacings may need tweaking; with teamed-up efforts on Hammond shuttles this will for sure be jointly solved. With more shuttles, we'll get more insight into the effect of different materials and additives. And of course the durability of the various materials is to be explored.

Almost there :-)