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NEC PC-Engine/SuperGrafx => PC Engine/SuperGrafx Discussion => Topic started by: Tatsujin on December 13, 2007, 12:51:14 PM

Title: that small little bastard
Post by: Tatsujin on December 13, 2007, 12:51:14 PM
as i reported already once a while ago, all the white cd-rom add-ons seeming to die off sooner or later. the cause of dying i like to show you with the following pictures, which speaking clearly for themselves.

You can see a gearbox from the motor to the laser-shaft, which contains 3 different gear wheels. for some reason, dear lord knows why, the middle gear is made out of a very different material as the neighbouring wheels, which became very brittle over the years. but not so for its neighbouring wheels, which seems to be made of solid PVC, and doesn't change its condition for over the next 132 years maybe.

(http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/5186/brokengear1dm6.jpg)
fig.1 close shot of the damaged gear wheel, which lost the half of its teeth.

(http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/8098/brokengear2bh3.jpg)
fig.2 same from top view.

so why the heck only this middle wheel was made of a such weak and brittle material?? i can't help my self, but was this possibly done by purpose? :-k
anyway, i couldn't spot out the exact material it's made off. anyone have any ideas?
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: guyjin on December 13, 2007, 02:34:36 PM
it's made of fail and aids.  :)

I wonder if it's a standard size you could buy, or how hard it would be to make a new one.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Tatsujin on December 13, 2007, 02:54:24 PM
yeah..i thougt about the same. if we take its dimensions and draw it down on paper (via CAD), maybe someone can reproduce that small "stinker", and this time, indeed, out of a better material.

but i don't think it was a standard sized wheel you could/can buy in any kind of stores.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Bonknuts on December 13, 2007, 03:52:21 PM
I'd just hand carve a new gear.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: bust3dstr8 on December 13, 2007, 04:00:34 PM
Nintendo could of made that one gear, its got that same lovely piss yellow look as the SNES. :-k


Anywho......check into RC car parts, there are lots of motor kits with tons of different gears.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Tatsujin on December 13, 2007, 04:09:53 PM
I'd just hand carve a new gear.

would you? i just have two cd-roms behind me, which are waiting to be fixed :P
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Turbo D on December 13, 2007, 05:15:54 PM
Nintendo could of made that one gear, its got that same lovely piss yellow look as the SNES. :-k

 :lol:
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Tatsujin on December 13, 2007, 05:24:56 PM
i give a shit about its color as long it doesn't change its chemical attribute in term of strongness :twisted:
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Turbo D on December 13, 2007, 05:25:36 PM
my yellow snes is pretty brittle. It quit working too  :x
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: elnino on December 13, 2007, 07:01:31 PM
This gear wheel sucks and has making me really angry several times, shortening my lifetime for about 3.5 years. At the moment all of the wheel's teeth are still there with no damage so far but instead I got somewhat of a thermal issue. Each time I want to load a CD I have to try for about 10 minutes until the disk finally starts rotating. If I turn off the engine and want to play a little later, the disk gets in action smoothly at the first shot.
I'm pretty sure it's the same wheel causing this annoyance because once I opened the CD-Rom unit after not playing CD/SCD games for about a month and manually rotated this wheel. Afterwards there were no problems at the startup!
Giving credit to this incredible as well as spectacular discovery, the people in my town built a statue for me and declared a public holiday by my name.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Bonknuts on December 14, 2007, 01:04:51 AM
I'd just hand carve a new gear.

would you? i just have two cd-roms behind me, which are waiting to be fixed :P

 I've got a white CD add-on that stopped working a couple months back(sonovabitch!). I haven't taken it apart yet, but I'm more than willing to carve out a new gear. I'll let you know how it goes :wink:
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: D-Lite on December 14, 2007, 03:45:38 AM
If you can find that replacement part I know about 10-12 little IFU-30 units that would like to find homes at a nice price  :pray:
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: spenoza on December 14, 2007, 03:51:43 AM
If someone can take some measurements of it, maybe count the teeth, some web searching might turn up some potential directions. I'd be happy to poke around if someone will give me something to work with.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: spenoza on December 14, 2007, 03:54:20 AM
Try sending that picture to these folks with a few numbers and see what they make of it. They sell lots of gears.

http://www.sdp-si.com/eStore/Group.ASP?GroupID=207
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Tatsujin on December 14, 2007, 04:13:56 AM
if i have some time next week, i will gauge the key data of the wheel and bring it roughly down on paper :)
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Oli_lar on December 14, 2007, 05:29:33 AM
I've seen plenty of gears like that in CD mechanisms before, its probably a standard part.
Take dimensions and send them to a gear expert. Also i'm sure that one could be made for a mass custom order....
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: D-Lite on December 14, 2007, 07:46:58 AM
I've seen plenty of gears like that in CD mechanisms before, its probably a standard part.
Take dimensions and send them to a gear expert. Also i'm sure that one could be made for a mass custom order....
I found quite a few vendors that make custom gears but you'd probably have to order a minimum of $500 worth or some such.  BUT, that money could probably be recouped quickly since this problem seems to be pretty common.  I'll check some of the non-functioning ones I have for this and like I said, 10-12 of these repaired quickly makes up a big portion of that investment.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: spenoza on December 14, 2007, 12:26:02 PM
Why order custom if we don't have to? Even if they are standard you'd likely have to purchase several.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: D-Lite on December 14, 2007, 12:57:19 PM
Why order custom if we don't have to? Even if they are standard you'd likely have to purchase several.
Of course, I'm just saying that if necessary, I'd consider ordering some.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: spenoza on December 15, 2007, 03:14:02 AM
I would definitely consider buying a "refurbished" unit from someone on this forum. As long as it'll talk to my cute little PCE Core.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Tatsujin on December 16, 2007, 04:52:23 PM
So, i finally measured the gear wheel and hope the result contains sufficient inforations to clone the wheel. sorry for the pathetic drawing and amateurish presentation :oops:

(http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/5562/gearwheel1nj2.jpg)

and now, let's do it :mrgreen:


Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Keranu on December 16, 2007, 05:05:59 PM
Haha, I love your CAD diagram!
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: guyjin on December 16, 2007, 07:12:01 PM
So, i finally measured the gear wheel and hope the result contains sufficient inforations to clone the wheel. sorry for the pathetic drawing and amateurish presentation :oops:

Are you kidding? that's awesome!
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Tatsujin on December 16, 2007, 07:43:14 PM
yeah..thanx so far :)

but there're still some tolerance issues which i couln't take to account > exact pitch teeth, depth of teeth etc.

also i would be glad, if someone may confirm if there're really 23 teeth on the bigger wheel, since mine had lost too much to reconstruct the exact amount due to less information. but i believe there must be 23 rather than 24 (but which could be still in the possible range). therefore the exact pitch between each tooth is very important.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: elnino on December 16, 2007, 10:54:24 PM
That's some serious reverse engineering! :clap:
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: D-Lite on December 17, 2007, 03:37:31 AM
yeah..thanx so far :)

but there're still some tolerance issues which i couln't take to account > exact pitch teeth, depth of teeth etc.

also i would be glad, if someone may confirm if there're really 23 teeth on the bigger wheel, since mine had lost too much to reconstruct the exact amount due to less information. but i believe there must be 23 rather than 24 (but which could be still in the possible range). therefore the exact pitch between each tooth is very important.
I'll pull one apart soon and double check.  One thing to note is that the diameter is usually measured to the midpoint of the teeth, not the tip.  So right before the tooth tapers off, that's the end point.
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Tatsujin on December 17, 2007, 03:48:33 AM
that was one of the problem i had, that i couldn't measure the exact dimension of each teeth since they're too small. so therefore i took the endpoints, since that would be the max. allowed space to its neighboring wheels :oops:
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: Tatsujin on December 17, 2007, 05:31:18 PM
just for the interested people in here. some inside shots:

(http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/9683/cdrom1kv6.jpg)
(http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/3746/cdrom2bf3.jpg)
 :)
Title: Re: that small little bastard
Post by: nat on December 17, 2007, 05:36:01 PM
Quite different from the Duo, isn't it?