Working on 1053 printer, making progress

 REMAINING ISSUE WITH 1053 CONSOLE PRINTER OF 1130 SYSTEM IS TAB

The Tab button won't consistently fire off a tab cycle. The solenoid to tug down and fire off a tab cycle doesn't work. When a tab is triggered it doesn't lock and slide up to a set position instead stopping immediately.

MAY BE A MISSING SPRING BUT HARD TO FIND ITS LOCATION

I see on the parts catalog and on the diagrams in the various maintenance manuals for the 1053 a spring attached to the 'tab latch' on the carrier. Unfortunately, all of these diagrams show a spring with the other end floating in space. I don't know where it attaches because of this omission. 

I also detected some gummed lubricant on the plate with an oval hole such that it didn't slide easily. This oval hole is used so that the tab latch keeps engaged until the carrier bumps into a set tab stop pin. The pin forces the latch and the plate to the back, which lets the latch pop off and stop the tab movement. 

If the plate doesn't move freely we can have the carrier jam when it strikes a set tab position, as well as failing to release the latch. I worked some clock oil into the pivot and exercised the plate to get it sliding freely. 

INCONSISTENT TAB CYCLE IS A DIFFERENT ISSUE

There is something inside the mechanism around the clutch on the operational shaft which fires off a tab cycle. There is an arm that should pop forward normally but be pushed back by the tab button to trigger the clutch. The linkage arm from the solenoid below will also push the tab arm back to fire off a cycle. 

This mechanism is a set of arms, pivots and springs, well hidden inside a mass of other gear such as the coil spring that powers the carrier return movement, but also a motor start capacitor and all the pivots for the other functions. The bottom is blocked by the solenoid assembly. This all makes visibility quite difficult.

I first need to spot what is amiss before I could possibly correct it. I may have to partially disassemble the items blocking my view and access, which could force me to readjust parts of the machine. 

TESTED SELECTION OF ALL CHARACTERS ON TYPE BALL WITH HAND CYCLING

I built a document with the patterns of the seven solenoids to select each of the 44 character positions on a hemisphere of the typeball. We have two tilt solenoids, four rotate solenoids and one aux solenoid where some pattern of those being engaged will cause the ball to tilt to a band and rotate to a position for typing. Aux is only selected for one character position, where it stays at the default tilt and doesn't rotate (home position). Otherwise, characters are chosen with a pattern of the remaining six solenoids.

I worked through all the characters and verified that the ball moved to the correct rotation and tilt. I also verified that the shift to upper and shift to lower solenoids caused the typeball to rotate 180 degrees to reach the second hemisphere. I could test those shift solenoids under power and was satisfied with their operation. The character selections were still done under hand cycling because my 48V power supply won't arrive for a couple more days, which is required to fire off a character under motor power. 

I also verified that the shift to black and shift to red solenoids change the tension of the tape that chooses whether the upper half or lower half of the ribbon is placed in front of the character being typed.