The Lexitron VT1303 came with a Raytheon RDS-345 daisy wheel printer. Although badged as Raytheon, it was manufactured by Qume. The model number is Sprint <TBC>. This is a very large and heavy unit.
The connection is parallel and is made with a very long 50 way cable. The connectors are centronics style, but the 50 pins are more reminiscent of SCSI than a parallel interface which is usually 36.
The printer came with some daisy wheels and printer ribbons.
It was definitely non-functional; the carriage and ribbon belts had both disintegrated. The platen knob was broken. There was also a lot of corrosion.
I was surprised to find that i could buy the carriage belt fairly easily – i would just need to cut it to length. The ribbon belt, which is very small, required a little crafting. The belt could only be replaced with a comprehensive tear down.
I couldn’t find a service manual for this printer, but i did find one for a similar Qume printer.
Replacing them required a fairly comprehensive tear down. There was also a lot of corrosion. This meant taking the print head off the rails etc which was going to trash the existing alignment and that realignment is quite tricky – it requires a bespoke alignment jig, for example. I was going to have to wing it.
I gave everything a good clean as i disassembled it and removed all the rust as best i could.
The belt was relatively easy to replace.
The ribbon belt is much smaller and is continuousbut the pitch is the same as the carriage belt. I cut the belt to width and then spliced it. It’s not perfect, but i don’t think it needs to be.
I put it all back together again and tried to work out how the relative position of the print head to the platen was set.
My first attempt to align it was a dismal failure. As it printed, the daisywheel didn’t spin freely and some of the arms went flying in all directions.
My second attempt was much better. This thing is awesome to watch. It spins the wheel very quickly to tee up the right character and then hits it with a little solenoid operated hammer.
The ribbons had all dried out, but i applied a little wd40 to one, and it was good enough to get some printing happening. I made some additional small adjustments to get characters completely printers – not missing the top or the bottom.
