New WM-DD center gear prototype is here (EDIT - final version is here)

Good news is here.

I tested the new gears in four randomly selected DD players (DC2, DD33, DD30 and D3).

In all of them, the gears work excellent, with 0% failure rate

- FF and REW work 100% OK, i.e. no bad gear contact. With the old gear, it often happened that FF or REW didn't work correctly because the old gear was shrunk and little deformed. Even 0.1 mm deformation, on one side, could cause problems. I had to compensate it by adjusting center gear arm. This problem no more exists with new gears. Position of new gear is given by the old metal disc which is of very good quality. Accuracy is also given by new support metal ring.

- PLAY mode: also works as it should. Three nipples on the metal support ring always ensure that the play function is always engaged correctly

- Mechanics noise: is as low as when the walkman was new. It also depends on other parts. The most silent was DD33 followed by DC2 and D3

- Wow/Flutter - was 0.07 to 0.08 WRMS on all of these players

Installation is very easy, it shouldn't take more than one minute. I need to prepare installation manual (I would like to finish it during the next week).

Thank you all for nice support, I'm very glad that this project is successful

Marian

 

Congratulations, this is excellent news

Let me know when/how I can order some!

 

Congratulations, Marian.
Bearing in mind all the obstacles you had to overcome, it is difficult to admire your work enough.
Not sure whether these gears will lead to a comeback of the cassette but they will extend the life of many WM-DDxx.
Looking forward for more news of you soon.

 

Thank you, Marian, for your great work. This will helps many people reviving their old Walkmans (I myself have two defective DD3s laying around).
I know from experience how much work it is to design, develop and manufacture such high precision parts, I do admire your work quite a lot.

Also, thank you for writing an installation manual. That'll help a lot as the DD3 can be quite tricky to disassemble at some parts.

 

I´m a proud new owner of a Sony WM-D3 and WM-DD30, and both have the central gear problem.

I´m looking forward to buy your new gears and install them.

Thank you so much for your work, Marian. You have made an amazing contribution to this big community which Sony decided to forget.

 

I will prolong this weekend (I took one day vacation on Monday) and I will make manuals (step-by-step) instructions how to fix DD walkmans, including center gear repair.
It would be great if there was special folder with step-by-step instructions created here. I also would like to revive my old Panasonic RQ-S step-by-step repair article and post it here.
Hugo, may be you can help with it.

I will also prepare eBay listings for new center gear. The price for eBay buyers will be EUR 30 (converted to USD) and price for active S2G members will be EUR 20.

 

Pretty good idea. A section for instructions could be pretty useful. I'd also have some tips on hand which could go there.

 

Excellent Marian, Congratulations !!!. I am anxious to have the spare parts. So much to see my walkmans come back to life as to be part of this beautiful adventure. It is truly amazing and exciting how a diverse, diverse and multinational collective dreams of finding the solution to a machine considered obsolete by the rest of the world. And in that process crazy ideas are exchanged, tests are done that fail, until finally, a person gives the leap in quality and goes beyond, investing hours and hours in resurrecting the extinct dinosaurs.
To the Jurassic Park we go !!!

 

Hooray! Also hooray for the manual you are preparing – great idea! A am very much looking forward to repair all my DDs soon

 

You did a great job Marian. Thanks to you our beloved DD walkmans can play music for years to come.

 

Well done Marian. I just saw a listing on Ebay for a metal centre gear and was happy to see it was your listing!

 

What he said^

 

Bought as well. I've been waiting for this for so long. Thank you very much, Marian!

 

Just placed my order. This is great! Thank you so much for doing this Marian!

 

Thank you for your perseverance, placed a order too!

 

Thanks to all of you. I'm glad that I can offer them for anyone, now. Now I have to solve how to pack them efficiently, with minimum time needed

Also, it is very important to publish my DD repair guide for beginners. I'm putting all my know-how and all my experiences with DD walkman repairs to it. I try not to forger anything. All problems that I had to solve so far must be there. It requires many hours of work but I would like to finish it by the end of this week. Later I will add also WM-F5.
I'm preparing it in my LibreOffice locally and I need help how to post it efficiently here. I will also be happy when you can share your experiences there.

 

The best way to publish your manual would probably be to export it as a PDF file as they can be opened on nearly any platform. Then just upload the PDF file to the forum (if it is smaller than 5.1 MB). If it is bigger, you could hand it over to me and I upload it to my web server and publish a link to it here.

 

It will sure be bigger. There are so many images. I should find a way how to optimize their size. Still lot of work to do.
PDF was original idea. That's why I create it in Libre Office. It is very easy to export it to pdf from there.

 

Marian,

I have some experience with optimizing document size for mixed picture/text PDFs. I would be pleased to give it a try. Let me know if I can be of any help.