I picked up an FT-50R recently in a “box of random cables”, the battery was flat, it was missing an antenna and one of the knobs was missing.
I borrowed the antenna from my Baofeng UV-3R original that I won in a raffle at the SERG convention I can’t remember how many years ago, and plugged in my power supply from my FT-817 and the battery took a full charge, it was just missing a knob.
I looked online and found a dubious source overseas which I ordered the replacement knob, but given the age of the radio I suspect it might have been a wasted $10, but we’ll see. Getting spares out of Yaesu for this radio is going to be next to impossible, so I decided to 3D model my own knob and print one up while I wait for the dubious sourced knob to arrive (or maybe not?).
Some time in Sketchup and I came up with this:
And onto the 3D printer it went. The first print the hole for the knob was a little too small, so a quick tweak of the horizontal expansion settings on the printer and two more prints, the third time was a charm, I now have a working knob for my FT-50R.
I’ve published it up on Thingiverse for anyone who it might be useful for.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5362900
73 – Josh – VK2MES
