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

[Tony Duell]

On Sat, Dec 17, 2016 at 1:28 AM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> 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.

As I said, I would not touch any part of the heads or positioner
(actuator). Unless
whole assembly can be removed as a complete 'module' (as is the case in the
RA60). I also would not attempt to dismantle the spindle.

But often the complete spindle and bearings can be unbolted and lifted out. On
a servo-positioned drive (as I believe this is) this will not affect
alignment. And
replacing the complete spindle assembly was a field repair on most such drives.

Things like the spindle motor (I assume this drive is belt driven),
blower, etc are
not that critical and can be removed without problems.

Is the a maintenance manual for this drive available. It should give
the order for
removing parts (basically don't do anything that involves removing heads!) and
tell you if any alignment is needed when replacing them.


-tony