The Search for the turbo cd gear

[Twood1130]

I recently bought myself a turbografx 16 with the the cd add-on. When I started using the CD drive, it shredded its gear.

I have been looking inside of old cd players hoping to find a working alternative. At the same time i am trying to get a new gear made for me by various companies.

I figured as far as finding one, i could scavenge one from a sony discman, seeing as how the turbo cd is basically a sony discman itself.
After opening a discman 131, I found a similar gear, but it didnt have a spindle hole.

After that failed I checked ebay for cheap sony cd players from around 1989, and found that the things are actually worth more than i had imagined. Im not about to spend 30 dollars on a maybe.

Has anyone else found a suitable gear in something? Or maybe you have an old discman you can check for the gear and post the model number.

[BlueBMW]

Ahh the elusive Turbo CD gear... As far as I know, no one has found a suitable replacement yet.  Your best bet is to find a broken Turbo CD that has a bad motherboard (theres a few of them out there) and then shuffle the two together.  There has been some talk of having a gear reproduced, but I think they've proven too expensive to produce on such a small scale.

[Twood1130]

I was talking to a company called print to 3d, he gave me a rough estimate of under 100 dollars, but he wasnt quite sure until he could see it. I havent sent out the remains of my gear yet. (it has a couple teeth left)

[BlueBMW]

I was talking to a company called print to 3d, he gave me a rough estimate of under 100 dollars, but he wasnt quite sure until he could see it. I havent sent out the remains of my gear yet. (it has a couple teeth left)

I've been meaning to try and measure and 3d model the gear in hopes of getting it produced somewhere.  Let us know how your 3d printing goes.  I've seen stereo-lithography before.  Its pretty neat, but I'm not sure how well it does something as small as that gear.

Alternatively.. find yourself a nice Duo-R and region mod the thing

BTW, welcome to the site!

[Frank_fjs]

I think you just have to be a little creative. I've heard of people drilling and gluing gears together in order to create a working gear.

My CD-ROM unit has a bastardised gear in it. It's a little noisy but it will last forever.

[Twood1130]

Alternatively.. find yourself a nice Duo-R and region mod the thing

I might have to do that, a duo-r would pretty much solve the whole issue.
Although it irks me to have the whole TG-16 and CD and not have it work.

[BlueBMW]

I might have to do that, a duo-r would pretty much solve the whole issue.
Although it irks me to have the whole TG-16 and CD and not have it work.

It is annoying having a broken CDROM, but you aren't alone!  Once you've gone duo though....

[Game-Tech.US]

If anyone needs help with a large order of the gears i'm in, I need at least a dozen. I have working units, but i'd rather place a new gear in them to sell them.

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, anyone who finds the way to get these made and only lacks the funds should PM me too.

[blueraven]

I'm in for a group order. I could use at least a half dozen.

[staxx]

I wouldn't mind 6 myself. Gotta wait, see and hope.

[SignOfZeta]

I wouldn't mind having 100 of the things laying around, depending on what they cost. I only actually have one CDROM2 that's broken, but I'm sure that if we manage to get the gear made that we'll have no problem getting rid of at least a couple hundred of them eventually. It might take 10 years, but they'll get used up.

[Duo_R]

if there is someone that has access to a 3d printer at an art school that might be the way to go. Or what about Ben Heck? Doesn't he have access to one of those???

[SignOfZeta]

IP is the way to go. Stuff that gets made with rapid prototypers is usually pretty fragile and, in the case of a tiny gear, might need so much clean up you might as well just hand carve the thing out of resin.

Does anyone actually have a gear that's been removed, in tact? We kind of need one of those to start with.

[BlueBMW]

I used to design and build plastic injection molds...  If only I still worked in that shop I could have probably knocked together a small mold to make these.... normal retail cost of such a mold would be prohibitive though.