Broken plastic, must it be replaced?

In my qmdi plus, I have one broken plastic cup as seen on picture, Is it necessary to replace it.

Thanks for help!

 

Yes it is. This piece helps the setting of the printing pressures. When they break you will go past the pressure set from the factory. Worse yet if one side is broke and the other is not you will not be applying pressure evenly.

These also aid the alignment of the drive gears, on the QMDI it is imperative all of the cylinders run parallel to each other or the gears will wear unevenly.

Make sure you periodically grease the top of each of these and it will help stop them from wearing and eventually breaking.

 

Thank you Paul, it is good to know!

 

Paul glad to see at least one person knows what they are talking about on these forums those caps are very important i always say its there for a reason right?

 

I have found many people do not understand how critical it is for the cylinders to be aligned on the QMDI. Not that it is not critical for any other press manufaturer to have the cyclinders aligned, but that people are willing to replace the short stroke pistons without measuring the stroke on the old one first. Or run the press without these plastic stops. Eventually over time the gears wear and you notice patterns when printing screens or screen builds. I completely understand trying to save some money by installing the parts without a technician and in the instances in which it can be done I condone it. But too many times I have been on the other end fixing the much worse problem made by trying to save those dollars. "Pennywise pound foolish" is not a cliche to be taken lightly with these pieces of equipment.

I equate Heidelberg printing presses to Formula 1 cars, there is little left to chance. All tolerances are important and must be met. These machines are like a giant Ferrari and are expected to run 24/7/365. The only way they can do that is to be kept clean, in tolerance, and maintained with the parts and lubricants that were meant for them. If done so, they will run with little issue and make you as successful as Michael Schumacher. (At least when he was racing for Ferrari...)

 

Very true Paul, but so many people are blinkered to that fact. (and not just on the DI)