Making parts for an antique radio

silence dogood said:
Take the old electrolytic capacitors apart, remove the guts and put a new cap inside the container. Outside, it will look the same as the original.
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It is more difficult, but in most cases you can do that with the paper caps also. Modern film capacitors are smaller than the paper equivalent so you can drill out the core of the paper one to fit the new one inside.
 
I've restuffed electrolytic cans, single, and paper caps in test equipment, ham radio gear (my two favorite things to work on), and AM or AM/FM radios. I got away from doing that. The "guts" aren't on display and the people that I restore for (myself and friends) don't care about the illusion of period perfect anyway. Ie it's not a visual restoration, it's a functional restoration.
 
Mike6158 said:
I've restuffed electrolytic cans, single, and paper caps in test equipment, ham radio gear (my two favorite things to work on), and AM or AM/FM radios. I got away from doing that. The "guts" aren't on display and the people that I restore for (myself and friends) don't care about the illusion of period perfect anyway. Ie it's not a visual restoration, it's a functional restoration.
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My kind of restoration. When I first got into electronics, I repaired a number of pre-WW2 radios. One trick that I used was to replace defunct rectifier tubes with silicon rectifiers, using the tube base for the module. The same for selenium rectifiers.

What do you do about tube replacements? Have you done any solid state substitutes? I have seen where FET's have been used to replace tubes, pentodes, as I recall, but haven't tried it myself.
 
RJ, Mike, I agree with you, However, when you get a customer that wants the antique radio restored like it was "original". As long as they are willing to pay for it, they got it.
 
Wood is likely the very least desirable material for the pulleys. Check McMaster Carr for any number of composites/laminates that would be suitable and mimic the appearance of wood.
Twer it me I'd cut the wood pulley off, Grind a form tool to the groove dimensions, plunge cut the grooves in a suitable material rod and epoxy the pulley on the shaft. Little more than 30 minutes total including grinding the tool............Bob
 
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McMaster garolite 1/2" rod would be ideal. Stock # 8526K82. About $5 per foot plus shipping...............Bob
 
RJSakowski said:
My kind of restoration. When I first got into electronics, I repaired a number of pre-WW2 radios. One trick that I used was to replace defunct rectifier tubes with silicon rectifiers, using the tube base for the module. The same for selenium rectifiers.

What do you do about tube replacements? Have you done any solid state substitutes? I have seen where FET's have been used to replace tubes, pentodes, as I recall, but haven't tried it myself.
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When I restore for me and the tube is good (with the exception of some of the notorious transformer killing tubes that I can't remember the number of) I'll keep it. I always put a solid state rectifier into radios that belong to others. And a fuse. I don't want to own some burnt out house :D
 
This is a good 3d printer project. There are even wood infused plastics. Plus plastic takes paint well. Additionally, changes are a simple matter in CAD and a new pulley with minimal infill for testing purposes wouldn't take long to print. I'm not sure if there's a gcode generator in MikeCAD. lol.....

Printed pulleys could be glued or even melted onto warmed shaft.

I don't know too much about radios but I'm wondering if brass pulleys would cause radio interference.

I'm not too fluent in MikeCad but I think the most critical measurements are the relative diameters of the pulleys as this looks to either step up or step down movement and that ratio may be critical to the application and I didn't see those diameters on the "printout"

But no worries, the moderator will shut this conversation down soon due to your thinly veiled attempt to mass market that CAD package......
 
We had some discussion at work about creating the pulley's with a 3D printer. A guy I work with has one and he's pretty good with it. I, on the other hand, have had my lathe for nearly a year and a half and have done nothing useful with it. So it it only takes a foot of stock to make two pulleys then I can justify buying a mill :cautious::D Two foot of stock? BONUS I can add a DRO to the mill...

About the only g-code my software does is when I look at code I say... gee... that's code? I don't know if I can do that :D I can program PLC's (mostly Allen Bradley ControlLogix) though. I have what used to be called an OtherMill circuit board mill and it's software will use gcode. I milled out some openings in a box enclosure faceplate once. I used Fusion 360 to create the part then the gcode. It took me forever to create the part :D

The pulley won't be an interference issue other than it won't match the other wood pulleys.

Upper right corner-ish. MikeCAD uses a highly sophisticated interface... 0.304" inner diameter of the pulley :D
 
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