Compact Cassette Cornucopia

 I got lucky on eBay again. Twice. First, I managed to bag a Philips D6310 cassette recorder for a fiver. This is a chunky cassette recorder that I'd intended to use with my Spectrum+ (see, there is a link to retro computers!). It was a bit bigger than I expected when it arrived but it looked cool and, initially, played cassettes fine, just needing a bit of a clean and a new belt.

But then disaster struck. One of the main drive cogs disintegrated. It was literally the consistency of chocolate and after playing 'We Didn't Start The Fire' a few times from Mr Joel, it gave up the ghost and chewed up the tape as a result. Fortunately, the tape survived. The cog did not.

To see what happened I took it apart (as you do) as the affected cog was buried deep inside, and ended up with a large bag of many, many pieces. This particular cassette recorder has its mechanism primarily constructed of plastic and is fully auto-stop on all functions. As a result, once I had it apart, I wasn't convinced I'd get it back together again - not that it mattered as I would never get a replacement cog in any case.

So, second stroke of luck on eBay. I saw a job lot of five cassette recorders on eBay and managed to bag the lot for £5.50. Bargain. The machine I'd specifically been looking at was the WHSmith unit. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

BARGAIN!

By the time the magical box of five cassette recorders arrived, I had found that someone had a 3D print available on Thingyverse of the offending cog from my D6310. (Interestingly, the same cog was used for many Philips cassette recorders.) And who should have a 3D printer to hand? My illustrious brother. After a few days a pack of six resin printed cogs arrived. Two were immediately rejected as some teeth had broken off. But that left four candidates that could potentially bring the D6310 back to life.

By this point, and much to Mrs Crasheds amusement (she was not amused), I had six cassette recorders in need of various things. They were:

Philips D6310

• New belt needed
• Drive cog stripped
• Needs a clean
• In a million pieces - put it back together!

A ) WHSmith CPD8300

• New belt needed
• Buttons Broken
• Runs very sloooow

B) Sanyo DR-101

• New belt needed
• Needs a clean

C) Sanyo M-787AG

• New belt needed
• Mechanism VERY noisy
• Fuse blew during testing

D) Bush (Rank)

• New belt needed
• Needs a clean

E) York Radio Cassette

• No sound
• New belt needed
• Really needs a clean

A to E as above

I shall cover the other machines in another post but, first things first. Let's get the D6310 back together..

A small cog in a large machine

An appropriate cog was selected to replace the chocolate one. As the picture shows, the original really is shot to pieces. Next, I laid out all the pieces to understand the scale of the problem I'll be facing...

Your leg bone's connected to your ankle bone..

Getting the transport mechanism together was not as difficult as I had originally expected. I had, by some good luck, managed to find the D6310 service manual and there is also a fantastic website with some good quality photos of a unit that I could also refer to. The new cog can be seen on the right side next to the capstan in the pic below..

Piecing it all together...

After an hour or so I had the transport mechanism back together. As it turns out, the only mistake I made was the auto-stop lever ended up on the wrong side of another levery thing so it went clunk clunk clunk instead of just click. This excellent website helped me out here too, with me realising my mistake eventually while reviewing the photos available.

A few points:

That spring at the front of the mechanism was a real pain to get in correctly. It's really strong and has to sit at the bottom of the post it sits on or everything will just not fit and then spring off into the carpet.

The mechanism is all plastic but is surprisingly robust.

I forgot to re-install the Pause button bar and had to remove the buttons and do it all again (including that bloody spring).

Back together
Now with added Pause bar!

Finished!

After I managed to get everything back together it was time to test it. I was concerned that the cogs that had been 3D printed might not be up to the task. But these were resin printed and, so far, the one I selected has not broken. The player is quite noisy though which I suspect is because that cog is much harder than the original. It could be that the material of the original was specifically selected to reduce noise. But it works!

Now I just need to find the time for the other five, and that's before I test them on a Speccy!