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I've just got back from 2 months on the road and have discovered that the pinch wheel on my Soundcraft 381 has perished and melted all over the deck .

This seems strange as it's not in direct sunlight and with the floods and torrential rain of recent I can't really think of a hot enough day to have heated the room to such an extent that it would cause the pinch wheel to melt.

Anyway, here's some pictures of said weirdness.







Now I have to try and find out if I can get a replacement pinch wheel for this machine or not. Any ideas?

Odd. Sorry to see that. You still have the core. Do you have any idea what the diameter used to be? Information from the manual or some such? You could try to contact this guy, here in the states:

http://www.terrysrubberrollers.com/

I've not used his service, but the reports from the TapeOp crowd are generally very good. Quality work, rapid service...


Good luck...

That sucks. I am not familiar with that machine, but I am assuming that the roller was made of a plastic and not rubber. Perhaps it just "reverted" and turned to liquid. The heat required to melt a perfectly normal piece probably would've done more damage to the rest of the machine.

It's the same folks who carbonize cattle in the crop circles, man. Consider this one to be a shot across the bow. They've decided that you know too much.

Hi Stuffy
I have used terrysrubberrollers for my tascam and had great service and roller rebuild from him.
Has your missus had the hairdryer on it????
DF

Thanks for all your advice (and no, Ferris, my "missus" hasn't stuck her hairdryer on it).

Will check out the pinch wheel people and see what they can do. Hopefully they can seeing as they do the 760.

BadComrade wrote:Was there another type of plastic touching it while you were gone? Dust cover, something like that?

I ask because I once had a "drink ticket" from a bar here in Chicago (which was the wrist and fist cut off of a baby doll) in the same box as a plastic toy, and the baby's fist and baby bottle melted in to the plastic toy to where it looked like a mold for the baby fist when I pulled them apart.

There was a box full of paper on top of it but it wasn't touching the wheel. That did cross my mind but I thought it pretty unlikely.

plasticizers evaporate over time. if you ever wonder why the dash in your car turns to dust, this is why.

That is so bizarre. I'd be interested in what kind of polymer they use for that. Polymers can have some solubility in one another or plasticizer could be leeched from one into another maybe. Really, though, to me this looks to be either melted or someone dumped some solvent on there. Polymers don't just spontaneously de-polymerize. Is the residue hard now, or is it still 'wet'? Also, what is that metallic looking stuff on top of the residue?

It was still kind of wet as most of it came away quite easily but had the consistency of chewing gum. The metallic looking shards are the same as the outer colour of the pinch wheel before it melted.

black berry jam