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QIC cartridge tape belt residue removal advice

I second that. Isopropyl is a disaster on a QIC.

My gut feeling has been that very slowly winding a tape manually to cause a deteriorated belt to peel off indirectly (rather then trying to directly pull the belt off) keeps the oxide more intact. It could just be that the few I pulled straight off were in worse shape. Other than that, I have no suggestions at this time on how to deal with these spots.
 
To continue this old thread, I have a couple of HP 88140LC cartridge tapes which I would like to try and resurrect. These are NIB, but the tension bands have deteriorated. In two other cartridges, I had replaced the tension bands with 6" plastibands, but it appears that the old bands may have pulled some of the oxide layer off the tape. These HP tapes are preformatted, and a normal DC600A tape will not work in a 9144A drive. There also doesn't appear to be any way for mere mortals to format such a tape.

Before I start on these next two, is there anything I could use to gently remove a stuck tension band from the tape without destroying the oxide layer? I've seen mention of isopropyl alcohol (and recommendations against it), as well as WD-40. Has anyone successfully done this on an HP tape?
 
mloewen said:
Before I start on these next two, is there anything I could use to gently remove a stuck tension band from the tape without destroying the oxide layer?
Click to expand...

I was successful recovering som thirty DEC TU58 DECtape II cartridges. To remove the stuck belt I used hot air desoldering station turned to the lowest temperature. From som distance I the blew the hot air onto the belt. One could see how the surface changed from matte to blank. Some times the belt snapped off just by the gentle heat.

I learnt this method from Rik Bos and it worked very well for these tapes.

There were som residue left on the tape coming from the belt which I gently cleaned with som Isopropanol. I also cleaned all the metallic tape guides and but som new grease to roller hubs.

I had problem with quite som tapes that some kind of white crystaline stuff had developed. This would cause the tape to stick to the tape guides. I cleaned the back of the tape in this area with Isopropanol.

Finally I replaced the belt with a new Plastiband type belt.

I was able to recover all but 1 tape. But that one had a damage to the tape not caused by the belt.
No, I did not bake the tapes prior to all this.

Good luck!
 
Sorry about the typos in the previos post. Phones are not great devices for writing and the edit time limit expired so quickly...
 
MattisLind said:
I had problem with quite som tapes that some kind of white crystaline stuff had developed. This would cause the tape to stick to the tape guides. I cleaned the back of the tape in this area with Isopropanol.
Click to expand...

If you are working with 1/4" tape, it is possible to glue lint free cloth to the guides to keep the tape from sticking. It spreads the gunk across the cloth instead of
in a narrow spot. The cloths I'm using were from a stack from an old unisys tape drive cleaning kit

DSCN1563.jpg

I've been posting a whole thread about this on my twitter feed @bitsavers as I've been working through tapes

The latest thing I discovered is you need to keep the cloth away from the edges of the tape guide, or it will shave a tiny bit of tape off the edge
when retensioning.

The other bit of magic was finding an adhesive. Aleene's Fabric Fusion from a craft store works really well. It is a glue that gets tacky quickly.
You apply a drop to one edge of the cloth, apply it to the back of the post then pull the cloth a little to spread it out over the back, let it get
sticky and wrap the other end of the cloth around the post.

The other bit of magic was cutting the strips. An old paper cutter works if you push the blade towards the cutting table to get a clean cut

DSCN1564.jpg

It is possible to reuse the modified base plates multiple times if the gunk accumulation isn't too bad.
Baking makes a HUGE difference in shed. Without baking with 80's Scotch thin tape, there is so much shed
that it still sticks.
 
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