atari printers - gears

I'd never want to discourage someone from fabricating parts for their puters or whatever. Seems extreme unless you're already outfitted and have considerable experience with the equipment. Some learn faster then others though... Searching for suplus parts (All-Tronics, Halted Specialties, Mendsellson, Surplus Cener, Surplus Sales of Nebraska, BG Micro, etc... don't quote me on the spellings) could possibly turn up something close, but it's usually hit-or-miss. Old scanners can also be a source for gears, and any number of old toys or whatever else. What you'd need to make a gear is an involute gear cutter. It can be done on a lathe but is more practical on a mill. It would be nice if there was a file you could buy that had the proper contour so you could file the individual teeth, with the help of a jig to guide the file correctly, and hold the blank...and rotate it a precise # of degrees. And yes getting the blank to the correct diameter is a big part it, but in reality this can be done with an electric drill and a file/emery paper. And a shirtload of patience. And finesse. Soft music and a certain ambiance...OMG you get the picture. Some sort of arbor would be required to hold the material (delrin I suppose, also referred to as acetal or "engineering plastic". I believe all 3 are at least somewhat interchangeable). I can't imagine the tolerances for a printer gear being all that critical. Therefore conceivably possible in the home slop..uh shop LOL LOL. Then there's the injection molding route. For about $100 or considerably less if you're a good scrounger, you can build a hand lever operated injection molder. Lindsay pubs has (had?) a book on the topic (by Vince Gingery). Some machining required. The BIGGEST hurdle there though is getting the die/mold produced. There is talk in the book of using a plaster mold for just a couple of reproductions. LOADS of pressure if present at the tip of that injection nozzle though. Yer guess is as good as mine... There must be every type of plastic gear in use out there I would imagine. The issue is finding what you need. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com