TU-58

[Jay Jaeger]

I have no idea what the material is called.  I just bought something
that was close on the O.D. and I.D. that I thought would work.   But,
when I look up PEX tubing at Home Depot, I found some stuff with .625"
O.D. which is maybe just a tad smaller than what I found, and 0.5" I.D.
which seems bigger than what I found.  Really, the only way I'd know for
sure is if I found the same stuff again - and I'm not 100% sure whether
I found it at Home Depot or an Ace hardware store.

This stuff has an orange jacket, about 17mm O.D., and a concentric inner
black part, with an I.D. of 10mm.  There is some kind of cloth mesh in
between the layers - I can see signs of the pattern in the outer jacket,
and I can see threads from it on the drives I actually used it on.

I checked, and I don't see any signs of glue - I probably picked it to
match the O.D. of the aluminum hub on the drive and press fit it.  I
certainly sanded the outer jacket down some - but it does not seem to be
much at all - perhaps just enough to rough up the surface some.
Whatever I did, it ended up without significant flat spots.  I seem to
recall rotating it between my thumb and forefinger as I rubbed it
against some sandpaper.

After the repair, I had good luck reading some Micro VAX diagnostic and
Microcode tapes.

JRJ


On 12/2/2015 12:31 PM, Paul Anderson wrote:
> Is that PEX tubing you are referring to Jay?
> 
> Any one have ideas for a TU10 or other tape drive capstans?
> 
> On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 9:31 AM, Jay Jaeger <cube1 at charter.net> wrote:
> 
>> I used orange over black tubing designed for carrying water under
>> pressure from Home Depot (here in the US), and then sanded it down to a
>> reasonable O.D. size (IIRC).  Worked great.
>>
>> I don't know that the diameter is absolutely critical - I think it has
>> some kind of speed encoding.
>>
>> On 12/2/2015 6:40 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote:
>>> Dear List
>>>                  While the silk screeners process the panels I have a
>>> couple of days for a little project
>>> I have a TU-58 and yes it had gooey drive wheels.
>>> Now it no longer has that problem but I have black and gooey fingers.!!!
>>>
>>> I know this issue has been addressed before.
>>> So I think somebody must know where I can get the right tubing to
>>> replace the degraded stuff.
>>> The drive hub is 0.42" and the rubber bit was 0.62" o/d
>>> A UK source would be nice,
>>>
>>> Rod
>>>
>>
>