Oldest machine you ever worked on

[imaginemoko]

No Wonder those Guys above are brilliant when it comes to the business of Copiers.... they are repairing already when am just 2 years of age..... hehehehe.... but oldest so far.... Ricoh FT 5632, FT 4422, FT 7650, FT 3713... am just new kids on the block...

[kyoceradude]

How about the 3M thermal transfer copiers, with the Pink and white paper. Also came in an automatic model the 3M 209. I worked on those back in the late "70's". What nightmares. Also a lot of AB Dick 675's, Savin 220.. How about that 3M VQC3?

[countrytech]

Does anyone remember the 3M Magnadry, or Sharp 720, or like me, try to forget them Really makes you appreciate some of the developments that have been made.

[copymon]

A royal, can't remember the model #. But I worked on plenty of Sharp 726 toaster oven machines back in the "Golden years" lol

And I remember doing drum hubs all the time on the old Sharp 741 toaster oven copiers.

[Zoren]

Mine was a Mita 900D.

i remebered this model when i was just an apprenticed back in '89. our warehouse have tons of these model stack filed one after the other... and my seniors used to say these models are the "coffins of the dead copiers"...

...........might as well add to your moving table, DC 111&131

[rthonpm]

The oldest for me is a Savin 9450 that always saw paper at registration. Never could fix it so it got hauled away and an MP4000 stands there now.
I still have another one of those monsters out there somewhere in my territory just waiting to spring up too!

[tech1569]

Remember these clunkers:

3M ThermoFax, MinoltaFax 1114 and a couple of liquid Savins.

[pepper38_cnd]

How about the 3M thermal transfer copiers, with the Pink and white paper. Also came in an automatic model the 3M 209. I worked on those back in the late "70's". What nightmares. Also a lot of AB Dick 675's, Savin 220.. How about that 3M VQC3?

I worked on the 3M 209 in 1979. It had a roll of the pink paper and fed cut sheets of thermal paper. Had the same vacuum motor used in the 3M Toner vacs today ( so it was not a quiet machine ) This thing was huge heavy, and a mechanical monster, almost no electronics except for heater control, the rest was all relays.

[Herrmann]

Develop 66.1, we called it "Tischfeuerzeug" (sorry, i found no englisch translation, best describe as a huge cigararette lighter, desinged for standing on a coffee table), because it has a fusing unit consisting of 5 Halogen lights which melt the toner to the sheet only due to heat, no pressing rollers or something like that. If a jam occurs, and the sheet stays in the fusing unit, it usually start to burn. Must be somewhere at the beginning of the 80ties.

Then, in the middle of the 80ties, there was the Canon NP500, at this time one of the fastest copiers in the world with 50 sheets per minute and a pontential control system. I liked this maschine very much, but it has some strange behaviur sometimes, so we decided to name it "Christine" like the car in the steven king film

[Robert Sveinson]

I worked on a Haloid Xerox #4 flat plate "copier". It wasn't terribly old
then, 3/4 years. Maybe the co. that I was working for then
AM Intersomething was trying to get a deal to sell them.
Or maybe the other way around!

Robert

[bernyb]

I have worked on a lot of old equipment. The Xerox 914, 660, copyflo and the standard are probably the oldest 914 was built in 1959

[hrnytwd]

liquid savin 600 ans 770, olivetti 1550, mita 900D

[Robert Sveinson]

I have worked on a lot of old equipment. The Xerox 914, 660, copyflo and the standard are probably the oldest 914 was built in 1959

================================================== =====

My hat is off to you! Looks as if your memory is still with you.
At the school at leesburg VA was a machine the size of the
914, and looked as if it was covered in that heavy green floor
linoleum. A lot of the cornners on the machine were rounded
like sample room tables, no sharp corners. Have you seen that one,
and if so can you tell us about it? I never got close enough to it
to REACH out and touch it!

Odd thing to-day ( Friday),,,,many Xeroid retirees, the ones from the 1994,
massacre and later ones meet most Fridays for lunch at the
same Legion we used to meet at every Friday from 30 to 35 years ago,
and still do.
The Xeroid sitting on my left I knew 2-3-or 4 years before he went to
work for Xerox. He worked in a big company print shop on my
favourite little presses after his leaving the Navy.
Today there were about 11 of us including the very charming
wife of a recent ( real, as opposed to squeezed) retiree. Very little booze but lots of good cheer.

Another techie, younger than I, but retired 5 years after me spent
last week with me on email doing, one might call word games. My memory is so good that I do not know what went on.

After the lunches, and coffees and beer or two arrived, one of our
waitresses who have the same length of service as we......
walked up to the table and said very loudly **One double white rum and
coke for the guy with the blond hair at the end of the table. Lots of
confused techies and finger pointing. Auld Bill my word game opponent
was shouting loudest and pointing at me, but every body ignored him.
Like every other week.The potential recipient of this nectar from the gods turned out to be me, because our waitress went back to the bar, came
back to the table hauled auld Bill back to the bar for a meeting and it
turned out that auld Bill thinking he lost the word game bought the rum,
gave delivery instructions not to the waitress who was going to do
the delivery. Blond ( mine and it's real) hair came into the picture
because 3 weeksago one of our waitresses did in fact comment on
my hair, the colour and amount of it. The word blond in this rum
thing is what caused 30 minutes of confusion until auld
Bill stood up, picked up the double white rum and coke and
put it in front of me.
and said **There now you stupid b*****d! Drink it and shut up!!!
I stopped consuming cigarettes and alcohol 30 years ago, and auld Bill
did in fact know that, abd he had another use for the nectar. One of the
techies around the table doesn't get to see us very often so auld
Bill bought this auld techie the rum, because auld techie had some one
to drive him home.

When the racket subsided I told my friend on my left about this forum and suggested he climb
in and roam around and see if there are any numbers he recognizes.
That brought a chuckle and I told him about telling my tale here
about having actually taken tools to the #4 flat plate thingy cause
I was bragging about the oldest Xerox machine that I had worked on.
Silence! HMMMM! He was looking at me and smiling and asked if I had forgotten the good old Copy Flo 11. More laughs, and he
maintains that that was the first **COMMERCIAL** Xerox machine.
And he and I both worked on one for a number of years. Then the sly bugger got himself assigned to the 9200/8200 family, and left me sucking toner out of his copy flo 11.

The ages, and years of service of the techies around that table was
distinctly odd. The techie sitting next to me ( my copy-flo buddy) had the longest relationship with Xerox. From 1966 til they finally retired him 4 years ago. His retirement, like mine was not manditory, but
our leaders used all the threatening sounding words in his dictionary,
and he had some words with many letters. I left in 1994 all the stars
were aligned, and I could not have created a better retirement package.
I did not realize that at the time, but my thick skull finally
made way.
There were three of us at that table today who were older than auld Bob,
but whose service was less. One tech 5 years less, me 9 years less
and 74 year old Derrick whose service was 20 some years less
than Auld Bob. Today's gathering was the jolliest that I can remember
for years, and we all left smiling! The techie on my left to-day should
be flat on his back. I am sure that the part
of his left leg that is supposed to be a knee, is putty with gravel in it. I
can feel his pain. I hurt and move dead slow, but I am a 4-minute
miler compared to auld Bob. I offered to put a bullet into his knee from
behind so thar HE would get off his ass and get in line for a new
knee. He could have had a new one 5 years ago!
Retirement like mine was not purely voluntary but it sure wasn't painful.
The next 2 or 3 retirements were more painful, and the techies left
with nothing like my benefits. I have never told my
wife how wealthy she will be when I *arrive in heaven.* Her pensions and benefits will turn me into a king when I get my greedy paws
on those fortunes.
HMMMMm!
Maybe I should be watching my very attractive ass. Auld Bill and my wife are good friends, and I have now confessed to both of them and to
witnesses too!

Makes me kind of WITLESS ONE might say.

Did I ever claim to have written the 1937 date on Chester
Carlson's flat plates?

If I did I lied!! I just cleaned them off!

Robert.

[Peter Montgomery]

...The Old Xerox A Color 620...

The Xerox A Color 620 was the first machine I was ever Trained on.
It was a good starting point and I learnt "What Is A Photo Copier" on this thing.

I remember them Fondly. (But Not Always

[KenB]

For me, it was the Canon NP-L7 and NP-70. They were Canon's first model, and came out in 1974. They were the same machine, except the L7 had a single-sheet original feed mode.

It was a liquid machine, had a cadmium-sulfide drum, and used RTL (relay-transistor logic.)

It used about 2 dozen microswtches for pretty much everything.

It was considered a "table-top" machine (probably because it wasn't a "console" model), but still weighed about 250 lbs.

I don't think I saw the last of 'em until about 1987, and I think that was because the parts weren't available anymore.