Vertical Mill - $300 Craigslist

Only you could decide if it was worth it, but I would think they would be a lot of similar gears that would use the same tooling. They built whiole series of equipment on similar chassis, after all. You could look at some of the manuals on the Agilent website to get an idea what they look like, if you're really interested. Agileent is the name of the former HP test equipment division, for those who don't know. The site is broken into chemical and test equipment.

I only had a week or two each year, and I made it a condition of emplyment that I could get that week off, every year.

That's where I work on computers, when I feel well enough.

"Michael A. Terrell" on Thu, 23 Feb 2012

As a friend says "If you have to turn up the heat, you're not using enough computers."

Then he doesn't live in Central Florida. :)

The photos/drawings would show me what they *look* like, but they likely would not show the diametric pitch nor the pressure angle. (And they might be "module" (metric) gears as well.)

As for the manual for the Tek plugin, it only showed the assembly with the gears as an outline drawing of gearbox (covered), Veeder-Root counter, switch and 10-turn pot as a complete assembly. No drawing of what the gears even looked like under the covers.

And yes, I know that Aligent took over the HP test equipment line.

I worked for a US Army R&D lab, and they did not accept such conditions -- especially since I did not even know about that hamfest when I hired on with them. :-)

I considered that I was enough ahead of the game vs the GIs in that if the rules got to be too much of a problem, I could quit and go to work for industry instead. That made enough difference so I stuck it out until retirement. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Coming back to answer one other part after sending off the main answer.

I remember at least one product which I could not make the mechanical parts for with my current equipment. This was an audio oscillator -- little modular one, not to be confused with the old tube-driven ones which took up four times the volume. The dial was coupled to a pot by a pair of spirals with dial cord wrapped around and under tension in both directions, so you got a linear scale on the frequency. dial

Enjoy, DoN.

"Michael A. Terrell" on Thu, 23 Feb 2012

Palo Alto, California.

I know that. What I meant was that you could see what styles you could do.

At one time Tektronix would provide engineering drawings for obsolete parts. There was a guy in Orlando making HV transformers for the tube & hybrid scopes about 15 years ago. He requested the drawings and suppliers for the core & bobbins and built a winding machine.

That wasn't aimed at you. It was for someone who might be lurking, or who might stumble across the tread later on. :)

I worked for mostly small companies back then, and one place the owner was a ham so he knew the reasons. :)

I stuck out the US Army till my commitment ended. :)

I did turn down a civil service job in LA (Lower Alabama) that was offered while I was stationed there.

They use DDS these days. You program the frequency, wave shape & output level into a tiny IC. Analog Devices make several of the DDS ICs. You can buy a complete demo board on Ebay for under $10, and drive it from the parallel port on a Windows computer with a couple 74HCT574 ICs.

Wavetek was really bad for mechanical designs, and always had too much backlash for the work I did. I had the HP 3325B digital function generator, while everyone else in test had Waveteks. :)

Not familiar with that area, but it's supposed to hit 80 here today. :)

You know -- with the plastic gears, I think that would be a job for someone with one of those 3-D printers. If the resolution is good enough, they could even make the two-part bevel/spur gear, which I could not with my equipment.

Hmm ... that would have been nice -- but I did not know that it was a possibility, so I just plunged ahead with what I could make. :-)

O.K. Good thinking.

Enjoy, DoN.

Would they have thr required strength? There are some people on the antique radio newsgroup molding replacment grommets & knobs. Some had molded replacment plastic gears by making two impressions and replacing the damaged section in one mold.

Hopefully, you won't need another. :)

Take care. :)

I really don't know. I suspect that it depends on what plastic is is capable of using. I have heard recently a mention (no URLs, sorry) of some using carbon filament as the plastic.

I personally would not have thought that the plastic which Tektronix used for that gear was strong enough to start with.

And given that I have looked at others of the same model of plugin at hamfests, and told by the feel of the coarse knob that the same gear was broken on those, that there was a pattern of failures.

And a later model with the same plugin number replaced the Veeder-Root readout with a LED numeric readout.

Unless someone gives me another failed plugin at a hamfest. :-)

Hamfest tomorrow. Not a very big one these days, but it is fairly close. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

"Michael A. Terrell" on Fri, 24 Feb 2012

Well, I hit seventy today. Of course, that was on the freeway. I think the temps maxed out for the day around 46 degrees.

I think it was degraded ofver the years from heat and chemicals. I've had some knobs crumble in my hands, while others that were used less often were fine

Probably when it was cheaper to build than the mecanical version. :)

Don't buy too many white elephants, unless you have plenty of gray paint on hand. ;-)

It was 44 in Ocala last night, and I'm not talking about a highway. That would have been 40, or 27. maybe even 25. :)

"Michael A. Terrell" fired this volley in news:8vOdnQmOjMhh1tfSnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

I didn't know you were in Ocala!

Hell! I'm just 40 miles due east of you.

(Cody's Corner)

Lloyd

I'm a few miles south of Ocala, but have an Ocala mailing address. I'd pay a visit, but need to get someone to work on my truck, first. I can no longer do some of the work by myself. It's going to be expensive. I have a bad water pump, bad power steering pump, a bad overpressure sensor in the transmission, and a bad A/C compressor. I could probably buy something else for the cost to repair this, but I'd be buying more problems.

Hhy 35 to 40 to 11. I have to make more turns to get to 441 than I'd have to after I hit 35. :)

Google maps says it's 71.5 miles if I use 441 to 40 to 11 to 304 and

My Email address is good if you ever want to discuss anything offline. Do you ever hit the new & scrap metal dealers in Marion County for supplies? :)

"Michael A. Terrell" fired this volley in news:W5SdnU7Jx9VM6tfSnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

Yeah... I mentally cheat a little. It's 45 miles from 11 to the city limits, but there's a lot of Ocala past there.

I haven't dealt with the metals dealers there, because I've got two in Bunnell who can get full-length stock in two days. However, I have bought some machines and trailers there and in the surrounds.

Lloyd