3D Printed Floppy Gears from Shapeways

[erichelgeson]

I recently ordered some replacement gears from here:

https://www.shapeways.com/product/27DNUVPJA/replacement-floppy-drive-gear-for-macintosh-comput

$8 for 12 parts + shipping

The design is opensource, you can find the 3d files here:  https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4167139

I have quite a few drives I'm replacing the gears in so I'll post my experiences here.

Replaced my first drive a 800k External Floppy P/N 825-1174A that was not ejecting. You can see the in the first picture the state of the old gear, it denigrates to the touch. The eject drive was a OMRON R2DG-31 - slightly different then other ones I've seen, but the internal gears are the same.

The fit is good, you can see the teeth line up well.

The video shows the first few ejects. Note the springs for the top were not attached when I took the video. Also the drive has some noise when spinning, unrelated to ejecting.

So far they seems to work just fine, I've done about 20 ejects and all feel the same. We'll see how it holds up and I'll post here with any updates.










View attachment VID_134060609_155824_339.mp4

 

[Torbar]

I installed one in my SE/30's floppy drive last week, and the quality seems pretty good,  alot cheaper than  that other ebay seller too

 

[techknight]

I figured it was going to go open domain eventually. The demand is high if you want these drives to keep working. 

 

[Stephen]

Thanks for sharing, Eric. I recreated the design of the gears and open sourced them because the existing options were priced in a way which felt intentionally opportunistic. Also, we now live in a world where most people either owns a 3D printer, knows someone who owns a 3D printer, or otherwise has access to a 3D printer (e.g., a library).

If anyone finds other components which could be fixed or maintained with 3D printing please feel free to reach out and we can explore open source designs.

 

[techknight]

Gears like these have to be fairly high resolution. Were these done on a standard 3D printer and work out ok? Just Curious. 

 

[Stephen]

Gears like these have to be fairly high resolution. Were these done on a standard 3D printer and work out ok? Just Curious. 

I was able to make working prototypes at 0.10mm resolution on my Anycubic Photon (LCD / Resin printer) while I was testing early designs. Based on Eric's photos I would say the quality he got from Shapeways is about 2x better than I was able to produce.

 

[techknight]

Ah, Nice. Glad to hear its possible at least. 

 

[avadondragon]

WOW!  For $8 I might as well go ahead and preemptively replace all of mine.  Should lubricate all the drives while I'm at it too.

 

[PotatoFi]

Gears like these have to be fairly high resolution. Were these done on a standard 3D printer and work out ok? Just Curious. 

Most desktop printers are "FDM" (Fused Deposition Modeling) of "FFF" (Fused filament fabrication, same thing as FDM just no trademark). They print by extruding plastic through a nozzle, typically 0.4mm in diameter. While your stepper motors give you a ton of X/Y resolution, the nozzle size is an important factor.

Here's what happens when you slice those for an FFF printer with a 0.4mm nozzle:

'

As you can see, the top structure isn't even complete, as the slicing software doesn't have enough geometry to reconcile a toolpath.

Now with a resin printer... different story. But I have no experience with those.

@Stephen, is my understanding that you receive a cut when people print this on Shapeways correct? If so, that is a fantastic arrangement. Thank you very much for modeling this part!

 

[Stephen]

Most desktop printers are "FDM" (Fused Deposition Modeling) of "FFF" (Fused filament fabrication, same thing as FDM just no trademark). They print by extruding plastic through a nozzle, typically 0.4mm in diameter. While your stepper motors give you a ton of X/Y resolution, the nozzle size is an important factor.

Here's what happens when you slice those for an FFF printer with a 0.4mm nozzle:

View attachment 34839'

As you can see, the top structure isn't even complete, as the slicing software doesn't have enough geometry to reconcile a toolpath.

Now with a resin printer... different story. But I have no experience with those.

@Stephen, is my understanding that you receive a cut when people print this on Shapeways correct? If so, that is a fantastic arrangement. Thank you very much for modeling this part!

That’s correct - I get $0.48. It’s possible to make a lot more by setting the price just a little lower than that eBay guy but my goal was to make this as cheap as possible. 

 

[PotatoFi]

That’s correct - I get $0.48. It’s possible to make a lot more by setting the price just a little lower than that eBay guy but my goal was to make this as cheap as possible. 

Thank you very much for your generous contribution. If you don't have your own printer and need a mounting bracket for a SCSI2SD v5.1 or v6, please let me know and I'll gladly drop one in the mail for you, no charge.

 

[techknight]

Most desktop printers are "FDM" (Fused Deposition Modeling) of "FFF" (Fused filament fabrication, same thing as FDM just no trademark). They print by extruding plastic through a nozzle, typically 0.4mm in diameter. While your stepper motors give you a ton of X/Y resolution, the nozzle size is an important factor.

Here's what happens when you slice those for an FFF printer with a 0.4mm nozzle:

View attachment 34839'

As you can see, the top structure isn't even complete, as the slicing software doesn't have enough geometry to reconcile a toolpath.

Now with a resin printer... different story. But I have no experience with those.

@Stephen, is my understanding that you receive a cut when people print this on Shapeways correct? If so, that is a fantastic arrangement. Thank you very much for modeling this part!

I am not a 3D Printer/CAD guy so pretty much all of that blew over my head.

What I gathered is just not a high enough resolution?

 

[davidg5678]

I am not a 3D Printer/CAD guy so pretty much all of that blew over my head.

What I gathered is just not a high enough resolution? 

This is correct. 3D printers that squirt plastic through nozzles don't have enough precision to make these gears due to the large diameter of the nozzles. It might be possible to print one of these with a smaller nonstandard nozzle size, though I don't have any experience with this technique.

There is another kind of printer with a higher resolution that works by curing resin with a high-resolution LCD screen. This is probably what Shapeways uses to make gears for sale. They are also available for consumers but are not nearly as common.

 

[PotatoFi]

I sliced it for a 0.25mm nozzle, just for fun. It would probably work, but I don't think you'd get quite as nice of a part as what you'd get from a resin printer or Shapeways. Plus I like the Stephen gets a bit from Shapeways, maybe enough for a coffee every now and then!

 

[Daniël]

This is correct. 3D printers that squirt plastic through nozzles don't have enough precision to make these gears due to the large diameter of the nozzles. It might be possible to print one of these with a smaller nonstandard nozzle size, though I don't have any experience with this technique.

There is another kind of printer with a higher resolution that works by curing resin with a high-resolution LCD screen. This is probably what Shapeways uses to make gears for sale. They are also available for consumers but are not nearly as common.

From what I've seen, Shapeways uses industrial grade, laser-based 3D printers, quite a step up from the average tinkerer's 3D printer. The particular ones I've seen from their videos and photos are EOS Formiga P100 and EOS Eosint P395 machines.

 

[Stephen]

Thank you very much for your generous contribution. If you don't have your own printer and need a mounting bracket for a SCSI2SD v5.1 or v6, please let me know and I'll gladly drop one in the mail for you, no charge.

Thanks! That's super generous of you — I've been thinking of getting a SCSI2SD

From what I've seen, Shapeways uses industrial grade, laser-based 3D printers, quite a step up from the average tinkerer's 3D printer. The particular ones I've seen from their videos and photos are EOS Formiga P100 and EOS Eosint P395 machines.

Shapeways provides the datasheet for their "Smooth Fine Detail Plastic" material. According to the datasheet it's a "VisiJet® M3 Advanced Plastics", but that doesn't help narrow it down too much because that material may be compatible with all of these printers. There's also this video from Shapeways about their fine detail plastic, which was sort of fun to watch. I don't think they list the specific resolution on their description page, but they do say the smallest clearance (space between parts) is 0.05 mm. For example, my Anycubic Photon can reliable print 0.10 mm but I anticipate their printer cost significantly more than mine. 

 

[Torbar]

Had 3 gears on my desk so I figured I'd post a couple of pictures.

Gray one is Stephens design, printed on an Ender 3 pro with a .2mm nozzle, the best one I managed to print

White one is his design ordered from Shapeways

yellow one is an original gear

So the yellow and white one appear to be pretty close as far as the teeth go, vs the gray one, the teeth aren't as deep, and probably not as strong(not sure what happened in the one side of it where some teeth are pressed in)

(the first picture is taken using a 10x jewelers loupe)

 

[PotatoFi]

Looks like a bed adhesion problem on that one side. I'm impressed, 0.2mm is teeny tiny!

 

[Stephen]

Gray one is Stephens design, printed on an Ender 3 pro with a .2mm nozzle, the best one I managed to print

White one is his design ordered from Shapeways

yellow one is an original gear

So the yellow and white one appear to be pretty close as far as the teeth go, vs the gray one, the teeth aren't as deep, and probably not as strong(not sure what happened in the one side of it where some teeth are pressed in)

View attachment 34957

Thank you for testing this on your FDM! Many people have asked if it's possible in the last few months and you're the first to test it and share results.

Also, this is a great comparison. I suspect the teeth on the white gear (Shapeways) are not as deep as the yellow (original) because of printing resolution. For example, if the detail from Shapeways were finer the inner groove of the tooth would be less clumped together, resulting in a deeper tooth "groove" (I'm sure there's a technical name — bear with me).

I'm going to update the Thingiverse page to warn against printing on FDM (even at 0.20mm) based on your results.