Great! That's a Teletype Model 15 in olive drab.
There's a
mailing list for people who work on these things. You can often get parts that way.
The thumbscrews are ordinary 1/4" UNC bolts, the standard thread in the US for 1/4" bolts. (Most Teletype screws are UNF, "fine thread", which is harder to get, but I just checked, and the thumbscrews are coarse thread.) A standard bolt and washer will work.
Cranks are hard to get. They tend to get lost because they're removable and stick out beyond the case.
Here are some things to do to get started:
- Hand crank the machine slowly. The motor fan, viewed from the rear of the machine, turns counterclockwise. The big printing bail should move back and forth, and lots of things rotate, but no typebars should rise.
- Hold down the plate of the selector magnet with a coffee-stirring stick or other light insulating object. Hand crank the machine. After one cycle of the printing bail, the clutch should disengage and continued cranking should result in the machine just idling, with no printing bail movement. That's the normal idle state with the machine running.
- Release and press the plate of the selector magnet while cranking. This is sending random data to the machine. Some random typebars should rise. They won't reach the paper at hand-crank speed; they're only driven through the first third of their motion. Inertia takes them the rest of the way. If a typebar rises, the carriage should also advance one space.
- Get an ohmmeter and measure the resistance of the selector magnets. It should be 55 or 220 ohms, depending on whether the two magnets are wired in series or parallel. Find the external connection (often a 1/4" phone plug) which connects to the selector magnets. That's where your data goes in. Check that it's connected to the magnets. Check for a short to the frame. Crank the machine to a point in the cycle where the selector magnet plate moves freely. Then apply a 9V battery to the data input and see if the selector magnet clicks. If that works, the selector is OK electrically.
- Take a look at the motor. If it has a flywheel with black and white stripes, it's a "governed" motor. If it has a General Electric data plate identifying it as a synchronous motor, it's a synchronous motor. The governed motor is kind of a pain, because you have to get a strobe lamp or tuning fork with slits and adjust its speed. Motors are interchangeable and there are two Teletype synchronous motors on eBay right now. They're as cheap as $10.
- Assuming you have a sync motor, using the ohmmeter, check the resistance at the power plug for the motor. It should be about 4 ohms. Check for shorts to the frame. If those are OK, the motor is probably OK to try to start. I'd suggest blowing it out with compressed air first, though. When you first start the motor, I'd suggest using an outlet strip with a circuit breaker, and a GFCI. The motor is the component most likely to fail, and replacing the motor is often necessary.
- As the sync motor starts, there's some sparking and ozone in the first second, as it comes up to synchronous speed. That's normal. If you see any sparking after the first second, or the motor won't reach full speed, there's a problem with the starting winding or centrifugal switch. That usually means a motor replacement, unless you're into electric motor repair. I've been quoted $200 by San Francisco's last electric motor repair shop to repair one of those motors, and replaced them instead.
So there are some easy things to do to see how much work you have ahead.
