Just wondering...
Does anyone know what manufacturing method was used for printing/painting/cutting the embossed aluminium overlay on the disk ][ drives ?
Does any such service still exist? And is affordable.
I know Maceffects are doing new labels for apple ]['s themselves but the disk ][ seems to have a different finish.
Cheers
Dave
All of those steps can be done using hot stamping in an impact press.
The tooling cost is under $1000 and this is a pretty affordable process.
Why? It isn't like Disk ][ drives are in short supply. Just buy a good one...
Thanks for feedback guys.
1000 bucks is way above my price point for 1 or 2 copies.
And I agree with the buy a nice one comment. The first one I bought was a bit meh, but I have since bought a nice drive 1 drive 2 set which is great.
The reason I ask is I'm messing about with something customised and would have been nice to replicate that style.
I can live without the embossing, but I do like the bare aluminium and other finishing on the disk ][ front panels.
The search continues ;)
Cheers
Dave
I have two very early Disk II's. (A2m0003, S/N 408748 & 411856)
To me, the embossed "top" part of the front panel and door feels and looks like some kind of poly plastic while the bottom has a thin piece of smooth black anodized aluminum adhered to and covering the bottom poly plastic front. Also, the the lower front panel's diagonal sides below the drive door are smooth and are the same "part" as the slopped finger pull recess which is also embossed facia panel. I've not removed the cover to confirm this after PTB's question, but that's what mine appear and feel like. I'd be willing to bet that the thin aluminum facia is glued to a smooth poly plastic facia, at least on mine.
20200729_151730.jpg
Nice Looking Drives.
And yep I've measured the aluminium and it seems to be 0.3 - 0.4 mm thick.
I did wonder if the paint was screen printed onto anodised aluminium.
Cheers
Dave
The black plastic face plate is what came on Shugart SA400 and SA390 floppy drives. If you see those drives without the Apple stick on, the bottom part is textured like the top also.
The aluminum piece is a thin piece of aluminum which does not appear to have been anodized. Anodization does not work well on thin sheet material. This does appear to have been screen printed, probably the colors first then the black. The words Disk ][ and "In Use" were left to show the aluminum color through. The part was then embossed (and probably the hole for the light was made at the same time) and a paper backed adhesive sheet was applied to the back side.
If you look at a lot of them closely you can see that the black color slightly overprints the edge of the color bands to make sure the edge is crisp. And you can tell the embossing was done after the printing too, plus screen printing is difficult to do on an uneven surface.
At one time (probably somewhere around 1981-1983 when a friend of mine worked there) I saw a stack of replacements for these at an Apple Dealer service center. They had the backing paper on them and were ready to be applied to drives that had been damaged.
Also those drives, unless that cable has been replaced aren't "very early", since it is grey. The extremely early ones I've seen had a rainbow ribbon cable on it without the shielding layer and strain releifs that came on the later grey cables. Plus 400k SNs.
Great read. Thanks for that info.
I'll do some more research.
You are absolutely correct, sir. Thanks for the sanity check.
The gray flat ribbon cable that appears in my drive photo is from a dual D/A PCB. The drive cables are not shown, but they are gray/shielded. My first drive was bought in 1979 and was used with my A2Rv0, while the 2nd one was bought a little less than a year later and it had the gray/shielded cable. I did have a drive with a rainbow color ribbon cable, it was probably the one bought in '79. I recall it having a lot of RFI. So the drives shown were probably from '83/84 when I bought my IIe. I got these then so both my floppies had the shielded cable to benefit the my IIe's improved rear panel ground plane. These drives have always worked and work fine to this day. I've never had to adjust their speed and have speed checked them throughout the decades. ;-)
..although now it contains laser optic items...
20210821_164929c.jpg
Oh yeah, those rainbow ribbon cable drives throw out massive amounts of EFI. Even the grey ones do, but probably less than 1/2 as much.
FWIW, the Disk ][ that I bought with my ][+ in 1981 had the grey cable with a little metal plate that clamped onto the back of the ][+. That ][+ came with a Rev-7+ (RFI) motherboard and the little aluminum plate that covered the back. Not as good as the //e, but a slight improvement over earlier models which basically threw out massive EFI.
Does the front of the Shugart differ from the front of the Alps drives? It seems like they are all textured plastic with a lower label applied.
Yes, Shugart, Alps, Tandon, etc., all vary slightly in dimensions and pattern of the texture, etc. Doors work a little different, etc... There were dozens of brands of drive mechanisms used by various clone makers.