start > 2006-06-16 > 2

Type Foundry update

Created by hww3. Last updated by hww3, 13 years ago. Version #2.

It's been a while since an update on my type foundry plans has appeared here, so I thought it might be good to recap some of the latest developments.

It's been a busy few months; we finally finished the floor in the foundry area after winter set in early. A new entrance door was cut in the concrete wall in order to allow equipment to be moved in. We moved the two English casters in May and they're awaiting a plan for getting them off their pallets.

About the time we were moving things in, I got a call about a Thompson typecaster down in North Carolina (at Heritage Letterpress, who was in the process of shutting down their hot metal operation). I went down with Ian Schaefer who was picking up a composition caster. We pooled our resources for the big move and spent all night driving the truck back to Pennsylvania. We also got lots of spares and some nice composition and display mats. I've also started a Matrix Inventory to keep track of what faces and sizes I've got. There are still a few faces that I have mats but no wedges, so I'm still on the lookout for those. If you've got spares, drop me a line!

Finally, I have a first pass at a keyboard emulator up and running. This piece of software is designed to fix a lot of the shortcomings of working with the standard pneumatic keyboard, yet still retain the flavor of working in a traditional way. It will output files that can be sent to the caster driving software (not quite written yet) for final casting. Eventually, I'll adapt the keyboard sofware into something that can take a standard text input file and turn it into an "e-ribbon" for casting.

I guess that about sums up the latest happenings; lots of stuff going on, and I'm excited about finally getting some of these projects wrapped up!

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