One of the fun things about Mechanical TV is that whilst the parts aren’t available off the shelf - many of the items required can be salvaged from junk kit or bought surplus.
This Carltone 380 Stereo Cassette Tape Recorder bought for 50p at a car boot sale provided many useful parts including a decent 6v cassette motor.
Another useful find was this Marantz SUPERSCOPE CR-1053L Cassette Tape Recorder:
This dates from around 1978 and cost £2 at a car boot sale. Not as many useful parts as the Carltone - but I used the 6v motor for my first Nipkow disc monitor.
As well as tape decks - old radios are another useful find. This USSR made Selena model looked to be a good source of knobs and potentiometers:
Unfortunately there is only one decent potentiometer amongst them - and the knobs are very poor quality with shafts too small to be of much use. However its a good source of ceramic capacitors. Very clearly marked values and the legs have not been cut very short meaning they will be easy to reuse.
Not all the surplus equipment available is junk. Once in a while a decent piece of kit turns up at a car boot sale at a low price. I’ve seen a few oscilloscopes - but not been brave enough to buy one. However here are a couple of items I did pick up recently:
The upper item is a BREMI 13.8V stabilised power supply. Okay it only actually delivers about 13.2V - but at £3.50 wasn’t a bad buy.
The lower item is an IWATSU SC-340 Scope Calibrator. Whilst not an obvious choice considering I don’t have an Oscilloscope to calibrate with it - the SC-340 also acts as a general purpose signal generator. Again quite good value at only £8.00. BTW if anybody has a manual for this item - I’d be very interested in a copy.
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