Tape Drive Capstans

[Mike Stein]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Al Kossow" <aek at bitsavers.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2015 3:18 PM


> Tape is the bane of my existence.
>
> All of the rubber parts will eventually soften or crack. I've mostly
> seen softening on QIC drives, and roller cracking on helical DAT or 
> Exabyte
> drives. If you look on the audio tape deck forums, they claim a pinch 
> roller
> is only good for maybe five years of life.

Odd; the belts certainly stretch and often turn to goo, but I haven't run 
across any melting rollers or idlers in my piles of consumer audio and video 
stuff yet. Maybe just not old enough; I wonder if there's any way to prevent 
or at least delay the deterioration it if it hasn't started yet.

m