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QIC Tape Cartridge Tension Band Replacement - Plastibands!

firebirdta84

firebirdta84

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 26, 2013
Messages
244
Location
Central Iowa
If anyone is interested, I just published a few videos showing my testing of PlastiBands for QIC Tape Cartridge replacement.

https://youtu.be/irOrR-ZYwjw

and

https://youtu.be/GVsYHLvCvZY

As always, I welcome feedback, and hope this is of value to some here.

A special thank you to CuriousMarc, Al Kossow, and Chuck(G) for their help, leadership and inspiration in this area!

Best always,
-AJ
 
AJ,

Cool videos - thanks for the suggestion of Plastibands.

I just spent some time last weekend during repair of my Tektronix 4054 to rebuild a couple of 1970's and 2000 tapes with bands harvested from Imation 6250 cartridges.
I did not boil the 6250 bands and the cartridges were recovered (although the Tektronix Interfacing tape from the 70's has lost the first six programs :()

I just ordered a box of Plastibands from Amazon - because I have more tapes to recover.

I would ask that you add tags to your thread for Tektronix 4051, Tektronix 4052 and Tektronix 4054.

I don't typically look at new posts - but found your thread by chance looking at all the "Other" posts.

I just got my Tektronix 4054 working - and the tape drive still works too :)
Tektronix 4054 Troubleshooting

Monty
 
Was I the first to suggest the Plastibands?

At any rate, I have two warnings:

1. Old Plastibands deteriorate with age, so be sure you get them fresh
2. Use these on older, slower drives, not on your hotshot high-speed SLT units--they won't hold up.

I'd love to get a sheet of polyurethane and punch my own annuli. My problem is basically that I hate QIC carts.
 
It just so happens I'm dealing with broken QIC tape bands at the moment as well! I'm working with a US-based custom rubber parts manufacturer to see if they stock something that'll work as a replacement, they've got samples on the way. If not, we can look at doing a run of a custom band size, but it'll be minimum order 100,000!
 
As the engineer at Imation explained to me, the bands are a "special polyurethane formulation" with some additives and were punched from a sheet as annular rings, then "flipped" by custom machinery to make a torus. He tried to locate the lab (manual) machine for me, but it was gone.

You might search the patent database for relevant material.

One of the problems with Plastibands is that they are strips with the ends fused together to make a ring. This joint can have issues as the join isn't perfectly on-axis much of the time.
 
Chuck(G) said:
As the engineer at Imation explained to me, the bands are a "special polyurethane formulation" with some additives and were punched from a sheet as annular rings, then "flipped" by custom machinery to make a torus. He tried to locate the lab (manual) machine for me, but it was gone.

You might search the patent database for relevant material.
Click to expand...

Will do, thanks! If I can't find the exact formulation, hopefully belts intended to be drive belts will fit the need for long life and not sticking to the tape. I also have no love for the QIC design, but it'd be nice to have tapes that are long(ish)-term reliable for use on e.g. 3B2 systems.

Chuck(G) said:
One of the problems with Plastibands is that they are strips with the ends fused together to make a ring. This joint can have issues as the join isn't perfectly on-axis much of the time.
Click to expand...

Indeed, the samples I'm getting are supposed to be sliced from continuously extruded tubing, so there should be no joint. They should be able to take higher tape speeds, too.
 
Let me know how it goes--maybe I'll get around to the big box of QIC tapes that I've been avoiding. After all, I determined that the friction roller on some of these drives can be replaced with silicone tubing, so now I've got working drives and a bunch of non-working carts... :)
 
Will do! Fortunately the pair of Archive Viper drives I've got both have intact rollers and seem to work fine (can read tapes written by the other). I don't think my 3B2 drives are likely to be in such good condition, but at least I've got a pair that won't eat tapes for making images of the tapes I do have.
 
I have a CNC stencil cutting machine (Sillhouette Cameo) and have thought it ought to be able to produce QIC bands easily, after all it is good enough for synthesising punched paper tape. If I find a sheet of a suitable thin stretch polyurethane material I'll run off a few increasing concentric diameters and give it a go.
 
Those belts have a lot less elasticity than the QIC bands, and of course seem to last for decades.
 
Yeah, I doubt the replacements I'm working on ordering will work as floppy drive belts. I'm sure the company could provide such belts, if there's a real need for them. Someone's got a source for brand-new Amdek CF-2 drives, and they're also pretty cheap, so clearly some company is still willing to run floppy drive belts! Aside from the CF-2 drive in my Amstrad PCW8512, I don't think I've ever had to replace a floppy drive belt.
 
You can also get newer DC600 cartridges and take a band out of those and install in an older DC300 with a broken band.
 
Bumping this thread.

I had great success a couple of years ago purchasing NOS 3M 6250 tape cartridge packs - the bands were in great shape, and I used them to recover Tektronix 4051 programs from DC300 tapes.

However, I just received one more box of NOS 6250 cartridges and all bands were broken inside the sealed packages :(

Monty
 
glitch said:
Yeah, I doubt the replacements I'm working on ordering will work as floppy drive belts.
Click to expand...

I've used a toothed drive belt from SDP/SI in a flipped configuration to replace a stretched drive belt on an 8" CDC floppy drive in an HP 9895A successfully. Due to the slightly larger belt length, I had to enlarge the motor mounting holes to support moving the motor away from the drive spindle to get the proper tension, but that wasn't a big deal.
 
Al Kossow said:
https://groups.io/g/hpseries80/message/3403
Click to expand...

There are two major problems with Plastibands. The first is that they age badly. Don't lay in a stock and expect to use them 5 years from now--they do lose their "stretch" with time. The second is that they're often not very uniform--and there's a 'join" where the ends meet.

There are also several minor problems. The first is that the PBs are made of a lower-Durometer polyurethane than the originals. The second is that the original bands have a lubricant embedded, which the PBs do not.

Bottom line: If you can get a PB to work for you, don't count on it working a month from now. Get your data and skedaddle.

The fellow that I spoke with from Imation years ago said the manufacturing method was to punch annular patches from a sheet of PU and then "flip" them to create perfectly symmetrical seamless belts. He tried to find the lab machine that actually did the "flipping" and mounting, but turned up empty.
 
Thanks everyone! I vaguely remembered getting some Plastibands after I posted my question this morning and found them.

I had ordered the 4 1/2 inch pack on Amazon - and put one on a couple of DC100A tape cartridges I had for a Tektronix 4041 computer.

Both tapes tried to auto load - but had errors.

Possibly my Plastibands had aged a bit - I put two together on one tape and it read the file I had written on it 20 years ago! Yippee!

Does this 4 1/2 inch band work on the DC300 tapes too - or I need a longer band?

Monty
 
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