Olympia SM Typewriter Chassis Spacer

thingiverse

So, as anyone who acquires an old Olympia SM manual typewriter is soon likely to discover, there may be mechanical issues sliding the carriage back and forth. This is very alarming at first, as these are not inexpensive machines, and something horrible must be mechanically wrong, right? Well, maybe, but it turns out that you almost always need to replace the chassis spacers (or washers) which have squished flat over the years. Squished, the machinery is lowered inside the outer case and causes problems. Super easy fix, takes 10 minutes, all you need is a straight screwdriver (with a very thin blade), and 4 new spacers. Various people advise various hack solutions to this (washers from Home depot, automotive tubing, etc.), but this is likely to lead to uneven mounting. If you have a 3D printer, a much better solution is available, print 4 of these in TPU, should be good to go for decades more. I have fixed 4 machines so far with these of different vintage, I think 5mm is the perfect size, but you can easily scale up or down in the slicer if you want a different size. ** 7/25/21 Edit ** I am circling back to focus on Olympia machines and plan to design feet. Also, after a little more experimentation 5mm may be too large, perhaps 4mm is better, but I think this may depend on the machine/case combination, plus the feet. If the final height from the foot bottom to the mounting holes for the case in back is too great, the machine won't latch correctly into the case--too little and it will be loose. This needs another look, but 5mm worked for a couple cases but not in others, Olympia was rather inconsistent in cases even between similar machines.