Hi all,
I'm working on a project to do some light repair and maintenance work on an Otari MX5050B-2HD machine. I work in an archive and we use this machine for transferring archival tapes to digital for preservation (we never use it for recording). It was a generally alright machine, though recently we've been having some issues with it. I went through and cleaned all of the switches with deoxit and now unfortunately we're not getting any sound from the machine. I've had a few suggestions over at tapeheads for places to check, but if anyone here might have a theory I welcome any ideas! Full disclosure I'm not super knowledgeable on working with electronics, but we don't have any good local technicians so my department is starting to learn this stuff in-house where possible.
The machine has an incredibly gunked up tension arm that basically doesn't move at all on its own. I tried getting in there to reapply grease but unfortunately I can't get one of the screws out that I need to. We tried a few different size hex-wrenches (2.5 and 3 in metric, 7/64 and 1/8 in standard) but none fit right. Does anyone have any advice for getting this screw out? The picture below is the one I'm talking about.
My other question is with our transport motors -- we've noticed when the supply side has a mostly full reel on it, the rewind doesn't work at all. It's fine if there's no reels, or only a little tape on the reel and the bulk is on the take up side. I'm looking for any clues about the motors that might point to why that's the case.
I'm hoping I've posted this to the right forum, but if not please let me know!
I'm working on a project to do some light repair and maintenance work on an Otari MX5050B-2HD machine. I work in an archive and we use this machine for transferring archival tapes to digital for preservation (we never use it for recording). It was a generally alright machine, though recently we've been having some issues with it. I went through and cleaned all of the switches with deoxit and now unfortunately we're not getting any sound from the machine. I've had a few suggestions over at tapeheads for places to check, but if anyone here might have a theory I welcome any ideas! Full disclosure I'm not super knowledgeable on working with electronics, but we don't have any good local technicians so my department is starting to learn this stuff in-house where possible.
The machine has an incredibly gunked up tension arm that basically doesn't move at all on its own. I tried getting in there to reapply grease but unfortunately I can't get one of the screws out that I need to. We tried a few different size hex-wrenches (2.5 and 3 in metric, 7/64 and 1/8 in standard) but none fit right. Does anyone have any advice for getting this screw out? The picture below is the one I'm talking about.
My other question is with our transport motors -- we've noticed when the supply side has a mostly full reel on it, the rewind doesn't work at all. It's fine if there's no reels, or only a little tape on the reel and the bulk is on the take up side. I'm looking for any clues about the motors that might point to why that's the case.
I'm hoping I've posted this to the right forum, but if not please let me know!
