jmacz
Well-known member
A few weekends back, I finally got myself to finish cleaning, re-gearing my floppy drives.
After mentioning this in the What did you do to your Apple/Mac today? thread, @s_pupp and I had a quick conversation about how much the eject motor seems to struggle after the gear has been replaced, and he made the observation that the original stock gear seems to be very flexible (even before it begins disintegrating) implying that this flexibility might influence the torque, reliability of ejection.
I had used replacement gears from two sources:
Based on that conversation with @s_pupp I procured some Anycubic flexible resin and printed a new batch of gears:
This new batch using the new flexible resin was definitely flexible. Not loose. But bendy under pressure. Definitely felt more like the originals albeit they don't disintegrate in your hands when you bend them Very different from my original prints and the ones I bought on eBay.
I tested this new gear in one of my IIcis that had a floppy drive that was really straining to eject. That drive did eject but you can hear/feel it trying really hard to do so and barely getting it out instead of getting stuck. With the new gear in place, it seems better? It seems to be ejecting better, straining less, and seems to be more normal like I expect?
I don't think it's fully conclusive yet... this is one sample size and just a bunch of ejects in a small amount of time. I will keep watching it and playing with it. But if anyone else is printing their own gears, you may want to try the flexible resin and see if you also see a difference.
After mentioning this in the What did you do to your Apple/Mac today? thread, @s_pupp and I had a quick conversation about how much the eject motor seems to struggle after the gear has been replaced, and he made the observation that the original stock gear seems to be very flexible (even before it begins disintegrating) implying that this flexibility might influence the torque, reliability of ejection.
I had used replacement gears from two sources:
- The original creator of the gear model available on Thingiverse who sells them on eBay.
- Using that original design (and his updated v2 version of the design) I printed some myself using 3D resin printing which is very accurate.
Based on that conversation with @s_pupp I procured some Anycubic flexible resin and printed a new batch of gears:
This new batch using the new flexible resin was definitely flexible. Not loose. But bendy under pressure. Definitely felt more like the originals albeit they don't disintegrate in your hands when you bend them Very different from my original prints and the ones I bought on eBay.
I tested this new gear in one of my IIcis that had a floppy drive that was really straining to eject. That drive did eject but you can hear/feel it trying really hard to do so and barely getting it out instead of getting stuck. With the new gear in place, it seems better? It seems to be ejecting better, straining less, and seems to be more normal like I expect?
I don't think it's fully conclusive yet... this is one sample size and just a bunch of ejects in a small amount of time. I will keep watching it and playing with it. But if anyone else is printing their own gears, you may want to try the flexible resin and see if you also see a difference.