In the Proprinter manual that I read as a PDF and then lost, I believe it says not to lube the guide rail. This would make sense with paper dust. However given age and infrequent use, my thought is that a film of light oil on all the metal rails and spindles to prevent rust is worthwhile - you can always wipe away excess oil, but rust can be harder to remove. I used sewing machine oil and then a low-lint wipe to clean the excess plus whatever dirt the printhead scraped off. And I’ve been using Krytox PTFE grease sparingly for plastic-to-metal and plastic-to-plastic lube. (Exception on the Proprinter, you do /not/ lube the printhead leadscrew with anything.) Incidentally if anyone finds an IBM Proprinter XL / XL24 service manual PDF, send me the link because my Google-fu has failed to find something I KNOW I read not long ago. — Jameel
On Feb 28, 2021, at 2:02 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 01:42:39PM -0500, Andrew Diller via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Here are the printers I fought at VCF:
Anyone familiar with the Diablo? It powers up, is very clean but the print-head won't budge. I wonder if there is a lock-down for shipping or something I couldn't find...
Did you try moving by hand with power off? Normally they will move with only some resistance when power is off. If not it may be dried oil like others said. There is debate on what if anything should be used on the rails.