1 Dec
2009
1 Dec
'09
3:04 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Ouch indeed.
I've put some epoxy putty on the damaged mounts and pushed the feet on.
In the next 24 hours or so, that epoxy should solidify into more or less
the shape it needs to be in. Backing out the screw should form the
thread fairly nicely. It won't be pretty, but it'll work.
I'll also have to do some panel-beating... the top cover took a bit of a
ding where one of the protrusions on the top-right foot hit it. Hence
why that foot is now a bit loose. Ugh. A few chunks of scrap wood and a
decent-sized hammer should sort that, though.
I've done far worse. I work at a photo-lab. The magazines that feed
paper into the machine have a metal tube and two plastic rounded nuts to
hold the paper reel in place. Some idiot did a paper-change, put the
paper onto the metal tube, then dropped the blasted thing on the deck.
Dented the tube quite badly. For bonus points, he/she/it started
tightening the nut, but didn't get very far.
End result: I ended up fixing it with a screwdriver, a hammer and the
MDF (?) table. Good fun. Thankfully the thread was ~1.5mm pitch. That
screwdriver will never be the same again (though it was rusted to hell
anyway).
The lack of a decent drill press on this end might cause problems. I've
got a Dremel in a Wolfcraft stand (which IIRC can be assembled so the
drill faces sideways), but I use that mainly for drilling PCBs and doubt
it'd put up with me making it drill through the supports. At the very
least I'd need to figure out some method of alignment.
What I need to
hunt down now are some replacement machine screws for the=20
mounting feet. Two of the feet have been removed; it looks like the=20
machine was dropped at some point in its life, and the mounting screws=20
have been snapped. On top of that, the square-profile metal tabs that=20
hold the screws have been split apart by the force of the impact.
Ouch. It soulds like you've got a similar situation.
Case damage, but good
electronics.
Or the electronics /were/ good until I hosed the System software. Tried
to upgrade the OS to v3.14 about an hour ago, now it won't boot off the
hard drive. Seems the floppy drive is either shot or very picky as to
what sort of discs it'll read. Fun.
Anyone care to recommend a good quality brand of 3.5" 1.44MB floppy?
At this point,
my two best solutions are:
- Drill the holes out a bit more (to around M5) and have a local=20
machine shop make up some threaded inserts -- M5 outside, M3.5 tapped=20
If you ask me nicely, I can possibly provide help with doing that. I have
taps and dies... Where is 'here'?
Leeds. West Yorkshire. "Up North" (somewhat).
Most electrical wholesalers, some DIY shops, and maybe
even Maplin, sell
spare (or longer, etc) screws. Yes, I did once use a couple in an
emergency to hold an HPIB cable in place.
I spent most of this morning ringing local DIY shops. Gave up after the
4th one. Turns out everyone's got countersunk M3.5x25 screws, but you're
basically stuffed if you want pan-head or cheese-head.
I've just ordered a bag of 50 from a place called "Precision Technology
Supplies". ?3.74 for the screws, ?2.88 post. Listed as "M3.5 x 25 POZI
PAN A2 ST/ST" in the catalogue, and should be here tomorrow (or Thursday
if Royal Mail decide to be slow).
Now back to finding out why the analyser won't boot from floppy... I
hope it isn't a broken disc drive, that would be a bit of a problem
(though not an unsolvable one: two 34pin IDC crimp-on plugs, some IDC
cable, a floppy drive power connector and a bit of soldering). The
pinouts are in the Service Manual and it looks like a (fairly) standard
300RPM 3.5in slimline drive.
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/