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 <cu...@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 >>> >> >