We wrote about dried out cassette tapes in an earlier blog post, and the problem they create for playback, screeching as they try to move through the playback machine’s mechanism and ultimately failing to play. You can hear an audio example in that post.
To get the tapes into a playable form, they need to be lubricated, but not too much! The fine art of administering just enough lubricant, then drying it so only a slight film remains, is the work of the LM-3032 Tape Restorator, a new machine built for PARADISEC by Sam King.
The LM-3032 is made from laser cut, 3D printed and CNC machined parts. It uses a laboratory syringe pump to evenly cover the full length of the tape in cyclomethicone (a silicone based solvent used widely in cosmetics and personal care products).
The tape then travels past three air ducts that blow air that has been heated to 70 degrees Celsius. This evaporates the volatile elements of the liquid, leaving behind an extremely thin film of lubrication. The tape can then travel through the playback path smoothly for digitisation.
Tests have shown that this process has no negative long term effects on the tape and in fact, tapes that were lubricated 5 years ago using this process still play with no issues.
With this machine, we can now play a number of tapes that have been waiting in the queue, in particular cassettes from the Solomon Islands Museum and the Vanuatu Cultural Centre that can now be returned to them, with playable digital files.
The Tape Restorator was funded by the School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne, and by a grant from the Australian Research Council (LE220100010)
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