The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

At this point I figure I’ll just make a few replacements of the Antenna Actuator (previously called by me as the gear arm) for these two machines out of plastic. Note that the VE 9-25 teeth’s specs are 16 DP 20 PA, and the VE 9-55 teeth’s specs are 10 DP 20 PA.

The only other gears are the two pot metal ones in the VE 9-25’s loop antenna support bracket and are easily replaced with the Boston Gear L112Y steel gears with bore reduction spacers.

Haven't decided if I am going to make these antenna actuator arms out of cast aluminum filled epoxy resin (cost of materials is $365 for mold making and casting the parts) or if I am going to get them made at a machine shop (getting quote this week). The machine shop said I would need to draw up the parts with the specs so they can do a CAD file that would be loaded into their automatic cutting machine. Attached are my drawings for both the VE 9-25 and VE 9-55 machines. Note that the photos may be distorted and thus not to scale, but the pdf files are not distorted and are accurate.

The two steel miter L112Y gears I'll be replacing the pot metal ones with on the VE 9-25 antenna bracket assembly are the same as the four I'll be using on the VE 9-40 except the ones for the VE 9-25 need to be ⅞" diameter end milled on the teeth end of the gear so they Seat up to the bracket components nicely, as the original pot metal ones are and do. Fortunately that is not going to be necessary for the VE 9-40's. The ⅜" ID ½" OD hardened steel spacers I used so far in these steel gears has been a bugger to drill through to make the set screw holes, even though I used a cobalt bit and cutting oil. It requires a new bit and a new tap for each gear I drill. I gonna try some zinc coated non-hardened spacers, I just hope they don't give the same problem as the bronze ones I tried, which warped when trying to press them into the steel gears. May just have to stick with the hardened steel spacers which are very expensive plus the extra expense of the bits/taps.

As mentioned above, the two L112 gears that go in the VE 9-25 Loop Antenna Gear and Arm Assembly needed to have the center ⅞” of the teeth end milled down about a 1/16” to allow them to mesh properly, like the original pot metal ones. See photo of the ⅞” end mill bit, the original gear face, and the gear after milled. The second photo shows the two milled gears meshing together and greased up in each Assembly. Note that the set screw holes are drilled about ¼” from the end of the gear’s hub.

I hope to get the first prototypes of the VE 9-25 and VE 9-55 Antenna Arms by next weekend for testing.