This is a bit of an odd one - we need to bake tapes ! Not as daft as it might sound :
key point is we have sticky tapes (reels & cassettes) & heating them for some hours (maybe ten) at about 130degF / 55degC (±5 at most) is the way to fix it !
the obvious first thought is to use a domestic oven, but the temperature required is at the low end of their range & they don't typically control temperature accurately enough ... too low => ineffective, too high => distorted tape & reels & cassettes, plus dreaded print-through, meaning ruination of the tapes !
so I was thinking it might be Idratek to the rescue - ie: make a largish closable box from (say) sheets of hardboard & 100mm insulation-foam, with a tungsten light-bulb for heating and a small grill & a couple of PC fans (one for even heat distribution & one for exhausting damp air / ventilation), and use Idratek modules for control - say a dimmer module + temperature module to control lamp intensity, another dimmer module + humidity sensor to control ventilation fan speed, plus digital inputs connected to reed-switches to sense when the box is open or closed & turn the whole thing on & off ... with Cortex & a macro to manage it well !
the quantity of tapes involved is not huge - say three hundred cassette tapes & twenty NAB reels, so the box won't have to be huge ... but I was thinking of making the arrangement permanent (no sense in fixing the tapes & having them then revert), which would mean having the facility tick-over at a very low level / very low power, essentially forever !
Another way to go might be to use a picaxe approach :
but the advantage of using Idratek modules would be easy tie-in with the HA ... for monitoring & signaling etc, that things are OK / not-OK ...
Any thoughts ? All comments welcome !
key point is we have sticky tapes (reels & cassettes) & heating them for some hours (maybe ten) at about 130degF / 55degC (±5 at most) is the way to fix it !
the obvious first thought is to use a domestic oven, but the temperature required is at the low end of their range & they don't typically control temperature accurately enough ... too low => ineffective, too high => distorted tape & reels & cassettes, plus dreaded print-through, meaning ruination of the tapes !
so I was thinking it might be Idratek to the rescue - ie: make a largish closable box from (say) sheets of hardboard & 100mm insulation-foam, with a tungsten light-bulb for heating and a small grill & a couple of PC fans (one for even heat distribution & one for exhausting damp air / ventilation), and use Idratek modules for control - say a dimmer module + temperature module to control lamp intensity, another dimmer module + humidity sensor to control ventilation fan speed, plus digital inputs connected to reed-switches to sense when the box is open or closed & turn the whole thing on & off ... with Cortex & a macro to manage it well !
the quantity of tapes involved is not huge - say three hundred cassette tapes & twenty NAB reels, so the box won't have to be huge ... but I was thinking of making the arrangement permanent (no sense in fixing the tapes & having them then revert), which would mean having the facility tick-over at a very low level / very low power, essentially forever !
Another way to go might be to use a picaxe approach :
but the advantage of using Idratek modules would be easy tie-in with the HA ... for monitoring & signaling etc, that things are OK / not-OK ...
Any thoughts ? All comments welcome !
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