A 3D-printed VHS cleaner is saving memories from mold

A common problem I’ve come across with decades-old analog media — particularly VHS — is mold that develops inside the cassette cartridge. The white fuzzy glaze on black magnetic tape often develops after being stored in damp basements and attics for years on end. Tapes like this, if run through a VCR, could do a lot of damage to the increasingly rare device.

I’ve been told to either throw tapes away when they get contaminated or open up a VCR to run a makeshift cleaning process. The latter solution is cumbersome, though, and risks damaging both the VHS and the VCR.

For VHS collectors, the mold situation has been a growing concern. And it’s what led Tony Crouch, of VHSisLife.com, to build his own solution for cleaning VHS tapes.

“If you had a really moldy tape, there was mold flying everywhere,” Crouch told me about existing cleaning methods. “I just finally decided there had to be a better way. So I sat down and started figuring out designing what I would want for myself, for a tool that made it easier to clean mold off of the tapes.”

The VHS mold cleaner is a fairly simple machine. A 3D-printed case holds two spindles each attached to a motor, where you place the VHS spools that were taken out of the VHS shell. The analog tape is strung along a post holding a cleaning pad, which grabs the mold and other unwanted particles while the spindles are transferring tape to each other. A directional switch dictates which way the spindles move, and a control knob adjusts the speed of the motors.

Cleaning a fairly moldy VHS tape I had from the 1990s took about 25 minutes front and back, including reassembling the cassette. The efficiency made my $140 purchase seem like a small fee considering I was now able to easily preserve some home movies I’d saved from my family’s basement and get them into a condition to be digitized.

What’s also notable is the ability to attach a vacuum to the cleaner for sucking up the mold that falls off the tape. Holes in the machine allow particles to fall into the 3D casing, where the vacuum will remove those particles by connecting to a large hole in the back of the case. This is a feature I have not seen on other methods of cleaning old tapes.

Once the VHS collectors community caught sight of the tape player, Crouch was inundated with hundreds of orders and at one point had 300 people on a wait list. So far, he has shipped over 600 units of the machine after initially announcing it for sale in May 2024. “It is something that I just do here at home as I have time and source all the parts, and try to keep the cost down, keep it affordable,” Crouch says. “I do it as what I feel like is a contribution to the VHS community.”

After many requests from customers, Crouch has also started selling 3D-printed spindles for Betamax, VHS-C, 8mm video, DV video, and other analog video formats, which has made the machine even more accessible for lower-budget cleaning. The cleaner has appeared in the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives Instagram page and has made its way to several universities and museums for archival projects.

The VHS cleaning machine is coming at a critical point in the life of the format. Not only is mold a factor, but after about 25 years, VHS drops in quality due to the magnetic particles separating from the tape. So far, the mold remover machine has saved a few home memories from my own collection, and according to Crouch, saved a bunch of others for his customers. Whether he planned for it or not, the VHS cleaner has turned Crouch’s hobby into a business that serves a niche community, and he’s even started thinking about possibilities for a second version.

“At the end of the day I just want to see as many tapes and home memories, whether it’s a Friday the 13th or your kid’s birthday, let’s keep it out of the trash and keep it for years to come.”