Replacement Gear for Floppy Eject mechanism!

[gnolivos]

I have made available to everyone a replacement gear for 400k/800k (internal or external) floppy drives.  this is to replace the tiny (smallest) gear of the eject mechanism which breaks over time.   I have tested and works great!

Comes in a set of 4 identical gears, repair up to four drives!

http://shpws.me/AL9P

 

[Ra226]

I love this--old tech meets new.  I have no need of it myself (yet), but love that you've provided it, so thanks!

 

[uniserver]

little correction,  your gear should work with most of the (800k / 2M) Sony Auto-Inject ,   Eject Assembly.

Not 400k drives, those are going to be something different.

 

[trag]

That is very cool.   Great work!

 

[gnolivos]

Full gear set also available now. (All 4 different gears).

 

[CompuNurd]

Woah, so you just send in your design and they print and send it to you?! Awesome!!

 

[macclassic]

I love it.

I need a [SIZE=10pt]Rear Panel Plate Apple part 815-0986[/SIZE]

for my SE/30 but have no dimensions of an original plate to do a CAD drawing.

 

[gnolivos]

I just searched eBay and found that they carry these plates for about 18 bucks.

 

[raoulduke]

Wait how do we get the gear?  I also need one.

Or if you don't want to print more, maybe just the dimensions?  Is it really that specialized?

 

[gnolivos]

Find them here: http://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/262221324671

 

[raoulduke]

Is there any chance of getting the dimensions?  The printing venture is a generous service, but for me it is not cost-effective to spend almost $10 on a part for a drive I'd planned to resell [crucially, actually, as a means of deferring the costs of an expensive lot].  I was thinking about looking for cheap analog clocks.

 

[Elfen]

Unfortunately that is how the market goes, Raoulduke. Taking a page from the Vintage Car Market, you can have a '72 Dodge that is only worth $5000 as is. So you put in $8000 worth of restoration work and paint job to get it to sell at a high price, but the market demands that the car is still only worth $5000 despite the work you did on it.

To make you money, you would need to buy several of these gear kits and fix several drives, only then would it be cost effective in the long run. But this long run is a marathon, not a 2K run.

 

[raoulduke]

But this is - or really should be - a pure hobbyist's market.  So your analogy is one strategy - and in fairness it's sort of the strategy that led me to this point (buying too much - in the way of the IIgs lot - in hopes I could sell part of it and some of the parts I kept from my old IIgs to pay it off).  But the other strategy is to scrounge and salvage.  And I'm wondering if that's a possibility in this case.

I really didn't expect the gear to disintegrate as I was trying to figure out the problem (this is the first time I've disassembled an autoeject mechanism).  So I didn't measure it before it disintegrated.  I'd rather not open another drive to measure, so I'm hoping someone has already done so.  And then maybe it's in some clock or something.  I was just fixing one of my clocks last week and I think a very similar part is in there, but I'd rather not take apart that clock specifically.

 

[gnolivos]

Hope this helps: I searched for gears for months and spent money on endless gears that did not work. In the end I had to develop my own. And learned a few things...

Gears are finicky. The engagement from tooth to tooth needs to be perfect. The angle of the teeth are critical. Also the size. If you don't find an exact replacement , it won't work. There is not such thing as 'close enough' here, although somebody may prove me wrong some day.

 

[raoulduke]

Thanks for the information.  I'll let you know if this works.     30122B is the right ratio, whether or not it's the right size.  I don't see those in the picture for the auction, but we'll see.

The correct picture is here: 

 

[gnolivos]

The 30122B is easy larger. That's a 16mm diameter.

 

[raoulduke]

And what is the correct diameter?  If you've made your own gears, you clearly have the dimensions.  So let me crystalize the issue if I have been vague to this point: will you release the dimensions?

 

[gnolivos]

That's kind of passive aggressive . I am not home but I can post after measuring tonite. I'm sure others who have bought already can post dimensions too. It's not like I'm keeping this secret.

What I can't do, or won't do, just to be clear, is post the CAD for others to print. Because I spent a lot of time AND money refining the design.

 

[raoulduke]

After I posted [i'm a law student] I was just actually thinking about how, if everyone (for instance) had 3d printers, someone would genuinely protect the value-added of their intellectual property.  Because on the one hand that total democratization has a tinge of self-sufficiency, but on the other hand it can easily negate the impact of intellectual labor.  I mean that's the argument with digital media, and if you can digitize manufacturing I see no reason it wouldn't extend to that too.  So I think retaining the CAD files is more than reasonable.  And - and to be totally honest largely because of the tone of your reaction - I will definitely go through you if and (realistically) when I need replacements for my drives.  As I've explained this is purely motivated on a desire to be as cheap as possible [caveat... I am the owner of 19 new random gears lol].

And having said all that I really would just like to 'check your work,' and I am curious if it's really that nonstandard and obscure.  Either way I may go through you in any case; it's possible another of my drives has an eject mechanism issue.  In any event, I do appreciate you diagnosing the problem and sourcing one solution.  As I say, I'm just curious if it's really that obscure and I want to try to be as cheap as possible in this particular case.  And I wasn't being passive aggressive (or I wasn't trying to be); I'd just asked that question previously in the thread, so I wasn't sure if it was being skirted.  My apologies and, again, I appreciate it.

**I feel like I need to add... obviously there are patents and trade secrets (also trademark law and copyright... lol so all traditional fields of IP law) to protect intellectual property (as would apply to manufacturing), but I was presupposing that those are not going to be workable in a society that can share production like mp3s.