Need Orbitrac Pads?

[pauln]

Me too. Love the Orbitrac system but can't find the replacement pads anywhere - Alsop seems to have stopped making them.

So, I made my own. Here's how:

Take one of the cartridges that holds the existing pad and use your fingernail of a flat screwdriver, spoon, guitar pick, or whatever to pry up the thing from the cartridge.

What you will find is that the cartridge thing is actually three parts that fit into each other. The most inner part is what the pad material is wrapped around, the second part is what holds the pad material to the first part, and the third part is the cartridge housing itself, which locks the second part in place as the second part holds the pad material on the first part.

Just take it apart slowly and notice the design. The alignment columns are assymetrical, so they only interlock one way. It all just snaps apart and snaps back together.

When you remove the old pad material, take notice of the way it is cut around the edges. It is basically rectangular, but with extentions. There are four primary extension (top, bottom, each side) that are shaped like trapasoids with their larger bases oriented toward the center of the rectangle. What is really important is that there are four additional extensions of material that go out in each diagonal direction from the corners of the rectangle - these are critical because they ensure that the corners are formed right when the material is pulled around the primary former of the cartridge.

It is not complicated after you lay out the material of the pad and examine its shape. Now what you want to do is replace this material that makes the pad by cutting an identical shape from clean pad material. I used the thin foot section of a new cotton athletic sock. I cut the sock open and there was enough area to make two pads with one sock, using scissors to cut the pattern.

Get some tape, as you will need it to hold the material around the pad former. Lay the material on a clean surface, lay the former face down on the material, pull the trapesoids up over the edge and use tiny pieces of tape to hold them. Check the alignment of the "grain" of the new pad material, them finish by pulling the diagonal extensions of the material into the center of the former and fix those with tape.

The tape only needs to hold long enough to get the primary former inserted into the second peice of the cartridge assembly, which locks the pad material edges in palce with pressure. Then press the second peice into the cartridge proper (making sure to maintain the right alignment of the assymetrical columns (because the cartridge has a rounded end and a squared end that goes into the spinning part with the handle).

Now the assembled cartridge is ready to be inserted into the handle spinner thing and go into service.

Works quite well.