Working with Old Tapes

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10/17/18 11:10 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:

> The 1/2 inch tape drives I'm familiar with incorporate such a device.
> Typically it's a ceramic thing, so it looks like a small shiny white
> rectangle near the heads.  It has to be scrubbed clean periodically
> when it gets brown from accumulated ferrite dust.

Certainly mine do--some drives use a single ceraminic "blade" and others
use a sort of comb structure.

My tape cleaner uses a tungsten carbide blade and a follow-up vacuum
that picks up the debris.

But even after baking, there are a few tapes that have issues where the
binder has bled through to the surface.  Such tapes will even stall when
being drawn through the mechanism of a cleaning machine.

I find that coating the tape with cylcomethicone allows the tape to pass
freely.  The lubricant evaporates without affecting the tape in a few
minutes-half hour.  I've used the same on floppy disks with good success.

My application method is with a felt wick fed by a reservoir.


FWIW,
Chuck