Re: Commodore 1520 supplies + programs

>> You were lucky, indeed. I have several of those and ALL have the same failure: this tiniest gear on the axis of the stepper is broken and split.

If I am thinking about the right part, it might have been replaced in my printer at some point as it didn't look exactly the same as I have seen in some pics...


>  I need to find one day a source of those damned tiny gears or I print them one day myself ;-)

I have access to a 3D-printer at work (we just got it couple of weeks ago), and I was thinking the very same thing! Unfortunately I have yet to study some 3D-drawing program to make anything by myself... And this gear is so very small that I am not sure how easy that would be.


> No, once they dry out you are out of luck. I remember giving them for refill at local “fountain pens repair shop” some good time ago, but as you might guess this place doesn’t exist for decades now. There are supposedly ways to refill them @ home (basically if you can open them in a non-desctrutive manner you should be able to revive them too) but I never tried. What I had in my mind for some time but never got to finish it in the end was to design an adapter for the modern "gel type" ball pen inserts. I even started to lathe the back part but got stuck with the front part.

A 3D-printed holder for some modern-day pen sounds relatively easy to do.

> One thought is to 3D print not individual gears but a long (2" to 3" or maybe longer) and slice it
> into individual gears.  Shapeways charges by the cubic centimeter plus
> a per part handling charge (the last time I looked) so if single print
> could be made into multiple gears, that might make it cost effective,
> presuming the sintered plastic was strong enough.  

That sounds clever and indeed cost-effective.

> They also do metal
> at a higher cost, but I'd be worried that a metal drive gear would
> chew up the next gear down the line.

I can see where this would end-up: gear by gear replacement until there would be a re-made all-metal printer mechanics replacement kit :)

--
Ville


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