A Modification For The Swift Cold Gluing Machine 6 to 24 Inch Models.
Posted: Friday, September 03, 2010
by Richard Norman
eden workshops
About 8 years ago a company called J.M.Campbell of Glasgow England went out of business.
They were the manufacturer of the Swift cold gluing machine.
Those experienced bookbinders among you, or those who were involved in packaging, will need no introduction to the reliable, swift whole surface cold gluing machine. Steadfast workhorses who never let you down. Easy to maintain and easy to wash up at the end of a day.
Most spares for the Swift cold gluing machine are still available from Norman Haynes Ltd, but it is inevitable that in time these spares are going to run out, though no doubt there will still be some diehards who will locally manufacture spare parts as needed.
These machines came in a variety of widths, from 6 inch to 24 inch, either desk mounted or on a custom stand with castors.
We had three of these cold gluing machines at one stage, one was a 1952 model which had alloy glue troughs, the others rather later were all made of brass and were in my eyes lovely machines, very low tech and easy to repair.
The only problem with them from my point of view was the noise they made, this may have been fixed on very late models, but ours were all old machines and probably some of the noise they made were due to wear of components, now that is being kind to the machines.
The gluing rollers, made of brass, sat one on top of the other, were about 2.5 inches in diameter and though covered in glue when running, which did cut the noise down a little, still made a certain amount of noise.
By far the greatest racket came from the top two gripping rollers; these sat one on top of the other and were made of knurled brass, these rollers served to grip the material as it was fed in to the machine.
One of my assistants kept complaining about the noise, it was he who suggested we take the two gripping rollers, and get them turned down and then coated with some form of hard rubber.
We went to a company who re-covered printing rollers and they charged us about 130.00 for the job.
The difference in noise was dramatic; you could talk without raising your voice. Another benefit lay in how well the rubber gripping rollers took the material as it was fed into the machine.
So if you have a Swift cold gluing machine which make too much noise for your liking, do as we did and get those two gripping rollers turned down about 1/8th of an inch and coated with rubber to bring the roller up to its original width.
There are an estimated 6000 of these machines still in operation around the world. Norman Haynes Ltd has many spares for the Swift cold gluing machine, but inevitably those spares will run out, some diehards may manufacture parts locally, but the writing is on the wall. It is a good time to consider what machine can replace the Swift cold gluing machine?
By R.Norman
Could This Cold Gluing Machine Replace The Swift? I am Richard Norman, my wife and I ran a book bindery in England for 25 years. We now have workshops here in France where we divide our time between bookbinding and bookbinding related activities on the internet.
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