Seal Combo Press Emergency Repair (for Steve)

Less

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
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Emergency repair tip for your Seal Combination dry mount press.

The most common repair is probably a punctured diagram (I hate when that happens). Actually, that has not happened to me yet, But there is a patch in mine.

This deals with an age and use related issue.

I purchased my 4366M-HS from the Guerrilla used equipment guy. The machine had a few miles on it, as a photo house had used it. From day one the machine worked great, but I had all these tiny black dots stuck to the heating platen. Since it did not affect the performance, it did not bother me too much. These little black specs did get on the prints every once and a while, so, I would scrap them off, but they would start to reappear again. I could never quite figure out where they were coming from.

After a couple of years of additional use I started to have problems pulling a good vacuum. Where the green lights use to go all the way up the gauge, they were now only going about 80% of the way up. I started having problems with dry mounting at this point, even if I turned up the heat. The dry mounts appeared to be ok, but I got a couple back that I did during this period.

The problem quickly got worse. I looked over the vacuum pump and the diaphragm and could not see a problem. As I looked even closer at the diaphragm I noticed that the perimeter of the diaphragm was no longer tall enough to create a tight seal when the lid was closed. The black foam under the edge of the diaphragm had disintegrated in certain areas, and that is also where those pesky little specs were coming from. They were getting sucked into the machine and stuck to the heating platen.

I called Seal and all though they had a repair kit, it was expensive and it included things that I felt I did not need. The kit consisted of an assembly, which included the bottom deck, the edge foam, and a new diaphragm.

I nearly placed an order when I realized that it was Friday, I was already behind on some dry mounting and I needed the machine now. Can’t you guys just sell me the foam?

Foam! Hey wait a minute - thanks anyway - I’ll call you if I need you!

I’ll try and use my blue foam from the sponge overlay that is used for laminating.

I did not want to pull the machine apart any further than I had to, so I crawled up into my machine and pealed all the black foam from the base plate and the diaphragm, cleaned the residue with Unseal and carefully vacuumed up all the dust. What a mess! While I was in there, I scraped and cleaned the heating platen. I then cut approximately 1 ½” strips of blue foam and laid them down with double stick fabric tape (don’t ask) which was about the perfect width. I put another layer of tape on top of the foam to adhere the diaphragm. It turned out that one layer of foam was not tall enough, so I carefully lifted the diaphragm from the tape and applied a second layer of foam.

It worked like a charm, and it has been several years and the machine has never worked better. $450 for a repair kit – I don’t think so! And I have plenty of foam overlay leftover.
 
For Steve!
 
Less, I had to do the same thing, but the folks at Seal sold me just the replacement foam strips, and the heat resistant adhesive to attach it to the diaphram. The replacement foam was about $15.00. I have had to do this twice in the life of my press (so far) and have only lost a small amount of grey matter to the adhesive solvent.
 
I'm glad to see you back to your OLD self!

Today anyway!
 
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