Mastodawn

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Let's make a new 3.5" Floppy Drive cleaning Disk (Mk II), a thread 🧵:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

So, the last few cleaning disks I've made, were based on Laboratory Filters, they're hard wearing but probably slightly too abrasive.
I found this link to an early 1980's cleaning disk patent:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4377831

US4377831A - Non-abrasive magnetic head cleaning system - Google Patents

Disclosed is a cleaning system for flexible disk equipment or the like. The system includes a cleaning disk made of an absorbent and porous fibrous material which has an area substantially saturated with a liquid cleaning solution. The cleaning disk is rotatably supported within a flat jacket. The jacket includes opposed openings on either side so as to expose a portion of the cleaning disk to enable the disk to come into contact with a magnetic head or heads and its associated pressure pad if one is used. At least one of the openings is enlarged to expose a relatively large portion of the surface of the cleaning disk, so as to facilitate complete saturation of an area of the cleaning disk with a liquid cleaning solution while leaving a portion of the cleaning disk dry. The jacket containing the disk is placed within a flexible disk system which rotates the saturated disk, thus causing the magnetic head(s) and the pressure pad to be cleaned in a non-abrasive fashion with a wet, dry, wet action.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Here we go, the recommended material to use is:
Tyvek

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Tyvek is a brand of synthetic flashspun high-density polyethylene fibers and the ideal candidate for floppy drive head cleaning.

@Gammitin does that stuff come in different thicknesses?

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

@JennyFluff (approx):
Tyvek 1025D 140 microns
Tyvek 1056D 160 microns
Tyvek 1073D 180 microns

@Gammitin which one did you use and does it work nicely for you?

@Gammitin like, so my worry is that if I use too thin of material, it would just behave like the liners in the floppy disks and be too wobbly as it needs to have enough support on its own to not destroy itself when driven by the hub. Also.: I want to make 5 1/4 inch ones. My 3.5 inch drives I use for archiving are highly serviceable (easy access for lens cleaning stick with IPA), my better 1.2Mb drive is not however.

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Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Next, carefully use a knife on the corners of the disk to open the case:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Then peel the magnetic disk off the metal spindle, we need the spindle. Then remove the fabric lining, which ironically is probably Tyvek.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Use the magnetic disk as a guide, if you have a compass, that's a good option too, but mark and cut out the disk shape on your sheet of Tyvek.
Mines not perfect, but it's slightly larger than the magnetic and fits in the guides.
Apply tiny amounts of Superglue and attach Spindle:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Apply small amounts of Superglue to the corners, where you snapped it open and then reassemble the floppy disk.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

I printed a label out for mine, for no apparent reason, other than liking labels 😆

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Now to test it out, apply a small amount of Isopropyl Alcohol, not too much, but make sure it covers the area of the window.

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

My Olivetti Prodest PC1's B drive is dirty, sometimes it has issues reading disks, so I thought this would be a good candidate to test it out on.
B> DIR
"General Failure error reading drive B"

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

In the cleaning disk goes, to work its magic:

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Well it worked a treat, the drive heads are now clean and working well 👍

Gammitin (Ben) 💾Jul 3

Mission complete, now to make a few of them, thanks for following along with the thread 🧵💾👍

☠ Captain Arcee ☠Jul 3

@Gammitin I have the thread bookmarked for when I need to do some floppy drive cleaning.

@Gammitin if it's ever useful i have a 3d model of a 3.5 inch floppy disk hub that I haven't tried yet but think will work. https://megatokyo.moe/dl/floppy_disk_stuff/

Index of dl/floppy_disk_stuff

@Gammitin Gotta make a matching one for every 3,5” format ☝️🥸

argv minus one Jul 3

Disk drives and mouse rollers: two things we used to have to clean regularly, until they went optical.

Boris Kretzinger Jul 3

@Gammitin Very well done, thanks for this guide! It's good to know the material. When my stash of 5,25" cleaning cookies will deplete eventually, I'll need to go down the same route.

Mx. Luna Corbden Jul 3

@Gammitin Oooh, this is starting out just like that guy I knew from that one BBS who claimed he'd made an anarchy disk and tricked a kid into setting the library computer on fire!

(But a cleaning disk is interesting too.)