Hello all, I am on a mission. A mission to save a bunch of minidisc players. Is it possible to 3D print tiny gears? Like 1/4″ in diameter or possibly even a little less? There’s a common problem in a certain minidisc player (one of my favorite models) that a certain gear tends to break, causing the laser to not seek properly. How far along are 3D printers? Are there even professional ones that can do such a thing?

I just don’t know enough about 3D printing to know if it’s possible.

You’d probably need to do some test runs. Really depends on feature size. SLA can print pretty fine features and some of the resins are probably perfect for a plastic gear. I’ve been meaning to try the Formlabs tough resin or something similar.

FDM with Onyx may not print the feature size you need. But could possibly. You can’t really trust the resolution numbers they give like 75um for FDM Markforged Onyx printers or any other printer I’ve seen. There are limitations but gears are the types of things they’re supposed to do well.

I use 3D Hubs to test materials with different print technologies. It’s come a long way.

Oh wow, that sounds promising! I’ll try to get a good picture when I have it apart again to show size and gear count.