This Technics RS-TR355 is actually quite nice. Sure, its a bit dusty and needs from the outside a good refreshment. But right now it is actually deemed to go to the tip.
Why? The pickups, these little things that wind up the tape onto its spools, are not moving. In most cases this is a problem that is related to ageing rubber parts that can be easily replaced. But in these series of Technics decks the manufacturer decided to use something more reliable – a gear. The material picked for these gears wasn’t picked too well. It ages badly and the gears are losing teeth. Leading to exact this result – the tape is not getting spooled up (picked up) when in playback. The electronic in the device detects that almost instantly and playback stops before it really started.
The Dilemma: No, you can’t call Technics and order these gears. That would have been a solution 25 years ago. But the time is over where this kind of spares can be ordered from manufacturers. There is also no other “similar” gear from something else that kind of works. The solution has to be to make a new gear.
We do have equipment that is ideal for such a task. High resolution 3D printers that turn liquid resin into a shape. But the first step is to take measurements and fire up some CAD software.
It does take some time and this gear is just a bit more of 1cm in diameter. Counting the number of teeth and get their shape right is important for proper function. Once we are close enough to the original, the prototyping starts. The file is exported into a format that can ultimately digested by the 3D printer.
After about 20 minutes of printing time, the prototype gets cleaned and installed. In this case, it took 2 attempts to get things right and the operation turned out to be a success. Victory!
In most cases the story would end here. Often only one or two pieces of a part have to be made because we are dealing with a rare HiFi device or just a not so common issue. But in this case a whole series of decks is affected by the issue and we decided to get these gears produced in a larger quantity from one of our trusted vendors.
So if you are the owner of one of these decks and run into the issue, you can order this part again – from our shop (not Technics).
