Drive gear needed for an AppleCD SC

[JT737]

Hello everyone!
I've been working on restoring an AppleCD SC external scsi drive and I've hit a snag. Long and short of it, the eject/drive intake does not work. And the reason is that the drive gear on the eject/intake motor is cracked. It is a small, 4.4mm 12 tooth nylon gear. I've check the usual places for one, and have not seen anything that I think will work.

Does anyone either have one of these or have the ability to print one if I sent my broken one to you? Of course I can pay!

Thank You!!

 

[mattsoft]

Hey there -- I have an AppleCD SC torn to bits on my workbench right now that I'm recapping and restoring. The gears on mine work fine, but I could remove the gear and design/print a replacement. Can you take a picture of your drive and which gear this is? There are a bunch in there.

 

[JT737]

Hey @mattsoft- It is the gear in the picture with my original post! Teeny tiny little thing that sits on a drive motor; I've attached a picture of where it goes to this post.

It sound like we are doing the same thing to our AppleCD SC drive; I just got finished replacing all of the caps on the board where the majority of them are located, now I just have to replace the ones on what I think is the "Motherboard" to the player. I also took the opportunity to retrobrite the case so that it looks great!

 

[mattsoft]

designed a test gear and am trying to print it now. my printer (Ender 3D Pro) is having a hard time printing such fine detail tho.

 

[JT737]

Yea, that's what i was worried about! It's such a tiny gear....every gear that has 12 teeth that I've seen for sale has a minimum diameter of 7mm....just a bit to big to replace this gear. I wonder if I could change some of the gears and simply use a slightly different setup.....

 

[mattsoft]

Well, on a somewhat related note, I've recapped my AppleCD SC, cleaned the lens, and lubricated everything, and it works PERFECTLY except that the power and activity LEDs do not work. There appears to be no voltages going to the LED headers on the SCSI board. ARGH! So something is messed up in that circuit.

Anyone have the AppleCD SC schematic? I can't find it anywhere online.

 

[jessenator]

designed a test gear and am trying to print it now. my printer (Ender 3D Pro) is having a hard time printing such fine detail tho.

Are you using the stock .4mm nozzle? I have a .2mm nozzle sitting around that I haven't gotten around to installing yet.

Do you mind sharing your STL? I wonder what happens if you adjust settings for that.

 

[mattsoft]

Yeah, I think the nozzle is a stock .4mm nozzle. Here is the STL if you want to try the .2mm nozzle.

 

[JT737]

@mattsoft -It's interesting that you say that because I have the exact same problem with mine. And I'm sure that the LED's aren't burnt out because I tested them.

 

[mattsoft]

@mattsoft -It's interesting that you say that because I have the exact same problem with mine. And I'm sure that the LED's aren't burnt out because I tested them.

Well dang! Yeah, the LEDs on mine test good too. I wonder if this is a common failure. For now, I've stopped troubleshooting it and was going to start looking for another cheap CD SC to compare to.

 

[jessenator]

mattsoft and I talked via PM and it looks like there are different gear designs?

I did one that resembles the pic in your initial post @JT737 I think, by the looks of our initial tests on both designs, a standard print nozzle (.4mm) isn't going to cut it :/ if I get my .2mm nozzle installed I can have another go, but this might be a great resin print candidate.

https://imgur.com/ZwEtz1C

https://imgur.com/a/3H1KKWp

But at any rate, here's the STL for the alternate design for the gear: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8qf9txdbpr8opy7/gear-remix-r1.stl?dl=0

 

[cadenya]

Is this the same gear used in the Applecd300 and 600? If so this is great, because I haven't found any replacements. My drives haven't broken yet, but it's just a matter of time.

 

[JT737]

@jessenator- Thanks! I've never done any 3d printing myself (at some point I'll buy one). But yea, I'd guess you'd need a very small nozzle because of the tiny size of the gear. If necessary, I can take a better picture of it for you.

@mattsoft- It could be. I actually do have another Apple SC, and the LED's on it work just fine, along with everything else.

 

[mattsoft]

Agreed, this would be a great resin candidate.

 

[jessenator]

Is this the same gear used in the Applecd300 and 600? If so this is great, because I haven't found any replacements. My drives haven't broken yet, but it's just a matter of time.

I don't think so, at least on the 300. I opened up mine and it has compound gears which sit underneath the metal of the frame atop which the AppleCD SC gears sit, sort of sandwiched in the metal frame/chassis

 

[JT737]

Hello Everyone!
I was curious as to if anyone has had any luck with this. In the mean time, the other idea I had to fix my gear was to use UV cured glue-it might work? We'll see!

 

[jessenator]

Well, I got my 0.2mm nozzle installed, and I keep having my feed tube (not the nozzle) clog like mad, so I need a break from it...

it started off promising, but it just fell apart after a few layers.

 

[JT737]

Ugh....I guess glue might be my only option. Unless maybe somehow I could make a mold of the gear and cast it......

 

[techknight]

I just rebuilt 2 or 3 of these drives and I believe i did a youtube video on them. But they were simply recaps.

I haven't ran into these failures yet.

 

[JT737]

I wish the only thing this drive needed was a re-cap, that'd be a lot easier than trying to find this gear!