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Old 23rd Oct 2019, 9:32 pm   #1
high_vacuum_house
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Smile Home made Tefi cartridge slip cases

I have had some success making slip cases for Tefi schallband cartridges.

I have been collecting these cartridges for over a year now and most have come over from Germany. Quite a lot of them are usually missing their slip cases which are there to keep dust out of the playing tape.

I therefore decided to have a go at making one or two to see if they would work. I had not done anything like this since probably primary school days!!. A trip to the Hobbycraft shop in Rugby gave me various colours of card, a scalpel, a cutting mat, various hardness of pencils and some Copydex glue.

I had taken Micrometer readings of the thickness of the card required and I found that 300 GSM card was as near as I could find in Hobbycraft. I think the staff thought I was a bit odd micrometering card !!

A good and undamaged Tefi slip case was chosen and the seam was carefully cut away so that it could be unravelled and marked out. It just fits on an A4 card. The pictures show the basic process. I marked out the edges as well as the fold lines in one. This was with a sharp 5B pencil so that I didn't need to use too much pressure and cause inaccuracies as the cartridge is quite an exacting fit.

Next the card was carefully cut away using a steel rule to ensure all cut lines were perfectly straight and at perfect right angles to each other. Even a millimetre or two out would render the finished slip case near unusable.

To fold the card the steel rule was used again and after clamping the rule exactly over the fold line the fold was as sharp as possible to make the corners both neat looking and sharp as I didn't want any misalignment. You need to push quite hard to create a sharp bend in the card.

Finally after dry assembly a Tefi cartridge was put into the case as a jig to aid the final alignment for gluing the seam. I used Copydex as this has a fine applicator brush in the lid and it is quick drying.

I have been rather impressed with the resultant slip cases and have made a few colours. I will be making more in the future of different colours. At 60p for an A4 sheet of coloured card plus 1/2 hour of time each, I think it is time well spent.

I have also tried to use the scanner and printer to produce a replica Tefi pattern slipcase though so far I have been a little unsuccessful due to the measurement errors generated through the scanner and printer. I am working on this problem, I need a printer which would accept stiff card though. Something my printer objected to working with last night.

This could easily be adapted to recreate any cardboard box.

Christopher Capener
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Last edited by high_vacuum_house; 23rd Oct 2019 at 9:39 pm.
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Old 23rd Oct 2019, 9:33 pm   #2
high_vacuum_house
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Smile Re: Home made Tefi cartridge slip cases

Here are the finished articles. One of my unsuccessful printed replica test slip case is in the background. I shall be making more brightly coloured slipcases soon as Hobbycraft has quite a large variety of coloured card to choose from.

Christopher Capener
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Old 24th Oct 2019, 7:36 am   #3
dave_n_t
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Default Re: Home made Tefi cartridge slip cases

Nice work, Christopher!

I always like the change of working with different materials, and your work shows clearly that 'standard' engineering practices (mainly taking care to be accurate, and using the right materials & tools) can produce good results.

Good luck in trying to find a printing technique for card - I'd be interested to know if you crack it.

dave
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Old 27th Oct 2019, 10:03 am   #4
bluepilot
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Default Re: Home made Tefi cartridge slip cases

Quote:
Originally Posted by dave_n_t View Post
Good luck in trying to find a printing technique for card - I'd be interested to know if you crack it.
There are printers that will print on card. The important thing is to have a rear feed tray so that the card doesn't have to bend around a roller.

I found this article:
https://www.mzuriproducts.com/best-p..._for_Cardstock

Of course it might not be worth buying one just to print a few sheets of card. Perhaps you can find someone who has one.
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Old 27th Oct 2019, 1:39 pm   #5
high_vacuum_house
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Smile Re: Home made Tefi cartridge slip cases

Good afternoon,
Many thanks for the link to the printers that can print on card,

I am trying to get a dimensionally accurate reproduction of the tefi cases though I haven't worked out how to do this yet. Scanning a steel rule and graph paper with 10mm squares shows up the dimensional anomalies rather well. The actual picture placement on the paper with my 3 in one machine is not repeatable either and can be off a few millimetres in each direction. OK for pages of text and general pictures, not good enough for an accurate and repeatable scan. Shown here is a collection of some of my completed Tefi slip cases taken in the garden to use the natural light.

Christopher Capener
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Old 27th Oct 2019, 4:06 pm   #6
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Default Re: Home made Tefi cartridge slip cases

Sometimes the paper feed can be a bit inaccurate. Maybe you can print an image and then decide exactly where to cut and fold afterwards.

I have scanned documents to a file and then printed the file. Usually the result is a bit smaller than the original as the printer driver insists on adding a border around the image. I don't know whether you can play around with the printer driver parameters to overcome that. The best way I have found of getting the copy to be the correct size is to use the printer as a copier. If you have an accurate original just put it on the scanner and do a high quality colour copy.

I have loads of Tefi cassettes but unfortunately none with cases to use as original. The Tefifon was an interesting device with audio quality somewhere between shellac and vinyl records. The main problem with it was that all the big artists of the day already had contracts with record companies so Tefi couldn't get any artists that anyone wanted to listen to.
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