Tony Duell wrote:
There are
certain exceptions... if I needed some mechanical component
machining I'd probably look for a local machine shop and ask them (my
You are lucky to have a 'local machine shop'/ There are, AFAIK, no such
places round here.
There's an engineering company in Huddersfield (Pennine Radio) that does
There was a mention of a Pennine Radio set in The Radiophile magazine a
few months back. I assume it's somewhat related :-).
sheet-metal and machining work. I'm toying with
the idea of asking them
for a quote on doing the CNC work on the DiscFerret front/rear panels.
If I had a CNC rig I'd do it myself, but the idea of drilling out the
front panels for even a small production run does not appeal to me...
Err, you could always get the purchaser/constructor to drill his own
panel. A large number of kits that I've assembled over the years required
you to do that.
I much prefer thigns to come as kits (toally unsoldered), since then I
can use solder and techniques that have been used for many years and
which I trust, unlike htis lead-free stuff which is certainly not
reliabel if soldered at too low a temperature (which it often seems to be
on commertical boards...)
[Silly example/ I was cleaning up an old Epson
printer nad dropped a
plastic bush from the paper feed mechansim. I looked for it for over an
hour and couldn't find it (I've still not found it). In the end I grabbed
a bit of brass rod and turned a suitable replacemnt in a few minutes...]
Knowing Epson kit, that "non-factory replacement part" (GRIN) will
probably outlast the rest of the printer.
THis weas an old-ish Epson (An FX-80 or MX-80 or something). It's
actually quite well made. It'll probably end up with an HPIB interface
board in it (which I do have) although I don't have the replacement
firmware ROMs to turn it into an HP82906.
The last two Epsons I had (a C84 and a C86) both died from Blocked
Print-head Syndrome. The ink dries in the head, then when the piezo
actuators are triggered on power up for the "cleaning" cycle, they
break/blow. Ugh.
This is a good old-fashioned 9-pin impact matrix printer.
-tony