On 10/17/18 11:10 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote: > The 1/2 inch tape drives I'm familiar with incorporate such a device. > Typically it's a ceramic thing, so it looks like a small shiny white > rectangle near the heads. It has to be scrubbed clean periodically > when it gets brown from accumulated ferrite dust.
Certainly mine do--some drives use a single ceraminic "blade" and others use a sort of comb structure. My tape cleaner uses a tungsten carbide blade and a follow-up vacuum that picks up the debris. But even after baking, there are a few tapes that have issues where the binder has bled through to the surface. Such tapes will even stall when being drawn through the mechanism of a cleaning machine. I find that coating the tape with cylcomethicone allows the tape to pass freely. The lubricant evaporates without affecting the tape in a few minutes-half hour. I've used the same on floppy disks with good success. My application method is with a felt wick fed by a reservoir. FWIW, Chuck