Stencil
Manufacturing ( part 7)
(For those who had witnessed automatic mounting machines on the first floor of headquarter would be interested in the history of this machine, KS)
(For those who had witnessed automatic mounting machines on the first floor of headquarter would be interested in the history of this machine, KS)
Mr.
Halpern together with Jimmy Marr, who made stencils, had worked with
Louis Mestre before World War 2 to build a stencil duplicator which
they named “Style”. When I joined Polychrome this was past
history. Louis Mestre was born in Cuba and smoked several cigars a
day. He was a designer-inventor of office related machinery. He did
work for Diebold Safe. He built the night depository for banks. He
designed and made two stencil mounting machines. These machines
included a station for mounting the backing sheet rolls, a station
for mounting the rolls of coated stencils (I believe a third unwind
station may have been available). The backing sheet passed over a
roll where it were a light mineral oil was applied. A thumbhole was
punched in the bottom of the backing sheet and the sheet was
perforated to form the stub. A line of glue was applied to the stub
and then the stencil was attached and the assembly cut to the correct
width. And dropped on conveyor rolls. After a short distance, the
assembled stencil was pushed at a right angle and fed through a
multigraph with a rubber printing plate which printed the stub and a
second one which printed the scale. They then dropped in a stacker,
which the operator rolled away and replaced when filled. Louis
Mestre also built a machine to attach the pliofilm sheet to the
stencil. Ray Lauzon worked at Louis Mestre’s shop for several
months getting this machine operational and later it was installed on
an upper floor in the school building on Hawthorn Ave. When the
stencil finishing operation was moved to Alexander Street, we bought
a mounting machine from the Vertex Co. of Montvale New Jersey who had
been making carbon paper collating machines. This machine did all
the operations in line and had stations for mounting the playful
either by gluing on the stub or gluing the pliofilm to a separate
parchment tab which was folded over the stencil after the scale had
been printed. A register mark was printed with the scale and an
electric eye controlled the cut off blade to insure accurate
alignment of the scale and heading.