Reel-to-Reel care?

From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com>
Date: Sat Dec 13 11:38:24 2003

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003, Mike Gemeny wrote:

> I???m left to wonder of these rubber parts could be recast. I have had
> success casting rubber using Devcon flexane. It???s a 2 part mix with
> extremely low shrinkage. The medium ???80??? liquid has a companion
> softener flex-add which allow one to adjust the hardness of the
> resulting rubber.
>
> I have used Freeman machinable wax to make molds with good results. I
> would think that with reasonable machining practice a run-out of a
> thousandth or so could be had re-rubberizing a roller spindle. (A human
> hair being about 3 thousandths of an inch)
>
> If greater precision were required a machining allowance could be added
> to the rubber and it could be frozen and ground after casting. (Not that
> I would look forward to liquid nitrogen all over my south bend lathe,
> and it???s not like we???re making disk heads here)

I don't think that much precision would be in order. I think as long as
the cast is made from an existing roller then a bunch of them can be
turned out in a short period of time.

I'm going to need to make a bunch of rollers for the various readers and
drives in my collection so I'll want to take this up at some point. Plus,
I've been wanting to find a project to try out the rubber casting kit I
saw at the local plastics shop and this seems like just the thing :)

-- 
Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Sat Dec 13 2003 - 11:38:24 GMT

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