The benefit of 3D printers is that they have made it relatively easy to reproduce just about any little plastic thing you might happen to break. If you’re one of the diehards that still has a cassette collection, you might find these 3D prints from Thingiverse useful to repair and maintain any broken tapes you may have.
If you’ve ever stepped on a cassette tape, you’ll know it’s easy to crack the housing and render it unplayable. If you find yourself in this position, you can always 3D print yourself a new cassette tape housing as created by [Ehans_Makes]. The housing design only covers the outer parts of the cassette tape, and doesn’t include the reels, screws, or other components. However, it’s perfect for transplanting the guts of a damaged cassette into a new housing to make it playable once again. The creator recommends using Maxell cassette parts with the design, as it was based on a Maxell cassette shell.
For the modders and musique concrèters out there, [sveltema] designed a simple 3D printed guide for creating tape loops of various lengths. Simply adding a few of these guides to a cassette shell will let you wind a longer continuous loop of tape inside a regular cassette shell. Meanwhile, if you simply want to jazz up your next mixtape gift, consider this cosmetic reel-to-reel mod from [mschiller] that makes your cassettes look altogether more romantic.
Many called the Compact Cassette dead, and yet it continues to live on with enthusiasts. Meanwhile, if you want to learn more about keeping your cassette deck operating at its best, we’ve featured a masterclass on that very topic, too!
In the old days, I’d just buy blank tapes for repair parts. Just find one that was screwed together.
Too bad you can’t print the actual tape. Or create tape in some other way. If you know of a way to make videotape-quality cassette tape e.g. by cutting old-stock video tape, the DCC Museum would like to know.
===Jac
In the sixties, surplus places sold wide tape. I think video. And the ads would talk about slicing them to fit consumer audio.
Maybe make a slicing machine and convert VCR tapes into thin strips for audio cassettes.
You can also make cosmetic reels out of PCB. Like this:
https://www.instagram.com/p/ClokzpgsoJK/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=