More Optical Media Drive Salvage

I started writing this about two and a half years ago. I'm posting it now so I can clean out my 'Draft' folder on blogger. Lots of the stuff doesn't still apply, but I figured I'd finish writing it with what I had and just post it.

I was inspired by a YouTube video that shows adding a lens from a DVD drive to your phone to give it better focus at very close range. So, I decided to take the DVD drive from the computer I took apart at the end of the summer (the one that most of the game console project is based on) and pull the parts out of it. And, maybe some more if I could find them.

Taking things apart is easy. Just find screws and clips and undo them. Once the casing was off, I really didn't care about it so I threw it away.

So now we have the CD drawer, the logic board, and the shuttle with the laser and lenses. The drawer isn't useless, but it's also not worth investigation. So we'll move it aside. It's also important to note that this drive actually has a stepper motor on the sled to move the laser. You know what that means: this one plus the two I had before from the CD Drive salvage means I can now build a three axis CNC machine from them. The travel on all three axes is going to be disappointingly small, but it'll still work now that I have three stepper motors to do it. I'm glad I saved the sleds from before.

Let's look at the logic board. The big chips on here really don't have a lot of information regarding their purpose. The big one is almost certainly the IDE communication chip. There's also probably a motor controller on there. The only one I was able to find any info about was the H8/3062 - a 16-Bit Single-Chip Microcomputer. This goes in the parts pile because I have nothing to do with this board at the moment.

Finally, we can move on to the laser assembly. We have to be very careful about taking this apart. There are hidden screws and brittle glues keeping this together. The challenge is to not break any of the ribbons. It's actually harder than it looks because the ribbons are so thin. Make sure you find and remove every screw you can and, if you're going to do what I'm doing, don't scratch any of the lenses!.

Once I gingerly removed the circuitry of the laser assembly, I was able to see what I was working with. The optics in CD and DVD drives are truly amazing. I'm continuously impressed by their precision - especially with the higher density disks. And it's mass produced and cheap. Amazing.

We have several interesting components in the laser assembly. There's a laser, obviously, and two lenses of interest. I taped the lens to my phone as the video shows and got some pretty decent photos.

Decent photos, I'd say. I think a good next step would be to make an adapter for my phone case so that I can just pop it in without tape. I'll design and 3D print something once I fix my 3D printer. But that's a story for another time.