heavy stuff -- was: Anyone want an RK11-C manual?

[Paul Koning]

> On Dec 16, 2016, at 4:43 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>> From: Henk Gooijen
> 
>> I really do not want to mess with the mechanical construction of the
>> entire RP03 drive. ... I want to move them "as is". 
> 
> Well, don't forget, you're probably going to want to go through them
> thoroughly before you try and use them, and you might do a fair amount of
> dis-assembly for that anyway. So a certain amount of 'taking apart' to get
> it out would be useful.

Disconnecting controllers from the drive electronics, or main drive logic boards from the head cabling, might be a reasonable thing to do.

Disassembling the mechanics is quite another matter.  The spindle and head actuator assemblies are precision mechanisms with very tight tolerances and alignment requirements.  It's not clear if those are documented since messing with them in the field would not be normal practice.  And I suspect that few, if any, of us have the tools or metrological skills to reassemble dismantled drives.

Some are less fussy.  I know from having seen it done that you can take an RF11 drive apart and rebuild it, though chances are you might have to reformat it if you do.  But the tolerances on those are incredibly loose compared to moving head drives.

	paul