First post, by Jollyroger
Everyone,
Here I have an interesting quest for the detail-maniac restorers out there.
The context: years ago I performed a ground-up restoration of a one-off Japanese prototype machine from 1999.
It is clearly a custom-made, sheet metal case, approximately 2x2x2 feet in size, held together by M3 Pan head screws.
The machine was in a pretty bad shape when it got to me, lots of missing screws, banged up panels, so I did a ground-up restoration, which actually turned out very well.
Being a stickler for details, I purchased spare components for as many parts of the system as possible, and in the spirit of restoring as close to the original as possible, I wanted to find identical screws to fill in for the missing ones.
And here is the challenge, the screws themselves. They are M3 JIS as far as dimensions go, but while regular JIS screws have a "dot" countersunk in their heads, to denote them from non-JIS screws, the ones holding this thing together have TWO "dots".
For a reference to the standard JIS screws, see here: https://www.metricscrewandtool.com/product-pa … -head-screw-jis
Attached to the post is a picture of the screws from this machine.
I kid you not, I scoured the internet and ultimately decided to settle for a set of brand new JIS screws of the same size and plating as the originals (which I obviously kept in the machine wherever possible).
Any clue whatsoever? Should I give up?