Micropolis 1015-IIB Latch issue

[Jannie]

Busy restoring a Model I. It cam with two Micropolis 1015-IIB drives but, for the love of me, I can't figure out how to latch the mechanism down so the disk latches onto the drive spindle.

The floppy inserts and the mechanical latch that holds it in place works fine. Pulling up on the latch door, releases it.

However, if I push down on the latch, the mechanism goes down and the drive even spins up for the 2-seconds or so it should, but I cannot get it to latch into position. Both the drives do this. The maintenance manual says to replace the latch mechanism in a case like this.

I suspect, but am not sure, that it might not be latching due to age, especially if multiple drives are doing this.

Any thoughts from anyone who's seen this before?

 

[Chuck(G)]

Okay, I went and tried this on a couple of 1015s on my shelf. Insert the floppy fully, press down on the latch until it engages. To remove the floppy, just press down lightly on the latch again. Is that what you're doing?

 

[Jannie]

Okay, I went and tried this on a couple of 1015s on my shelf. Insert the floppy fully, press down on the latch until it engages. To remove the floppy, just press down lightly on the latch again. Is that what you're doing?

Thanks Chuck, yup, that's what I'm doing. I *think* I mostly figured out how it should work but not quite yet *why* it's not working.

Attached to the drive mechanism is a spring-loaded actuator, basically an oval shaped catch. When you push the mechanism down, this oval goes through a slot that's part of the faceplate. Once it's gone through this slot, it should rotate 90 degrees and then catch on the sides of the slot, i.e. it can't come out. The disk is now locked onto the spindle.

When you push down on the mechanism vie the load door, it should, again, rotate 90 degrees and thus be able to release via the slot that held it.

Basically, every time you push down on the mechanism, it should lock and unlock via this 90 degree rotation.

But this is not happening. I've cleaned and lubed everything but no rotation, as if whatever should make it rotate is broken / worn out.

If you could look at the latch mechanism when loading a floppy and see if you see this rotation, it would be great to confirm my thinking. You can see it from the right hand side of the drive and/or through an inspection opening in the bottom of the drive.

Thanks again!

 

[Chuck(G)]

I may be on to something here. Yes, that rectangular piece inside the round "bumper" rotates every time you press down on the latch--but here's the thing:

Out of curiosity, I gave the assembly a quick spritz of CRC heavy-duty silicone lube--and it quit working! If I rotated the rectangular bit with a probe while pressing down on the latch, the drive would latch. But pressing down again would not release the disk!

I'll have to clean the lube off the latch mechanism to check, but it could be that lube on that defeats a friction-driven element.

 

[Jannie]

I may be on to something here. Yes, that rectangular piece inside the round "bumper" rotates every time you press down on the latch--but here's the thing:

Out of curiosity, I gave the assembly a quick spritz of CRC heavy-duty silicone lube--and it quit working! If I rotated the rectangular bit with a probe while pressing down on the latch, the drive would latch. But pressing down again would not release the disk!

I'll have to clean the lube off the latch mechanism to check, but it could be that lube on that defeats a friction-driven element.

When mine did not want to rotate, I assumed it's the grease that got old and sticky. There was a good helping of grease all over it. The maintenance manual actually says to put a big helping of grease on it.

So I washed all the old grease off with isoprop and it definitely rotates better by hand. But it still don't want to rotate by just pushing down the latch. Then tried WD40 but still no luck.....