What To Do With 33 DVD Burners?

I just scored 33 free DVD burners, and need something to do with them. The 18 desktop burners in the back are all 16x, and the 15 laptop burners are I believe 8x. I've already taken apart a couple of them and (safely) extracted 6 of the 16x burner diodes. I'm guessing I'll turn all of the 16x's into pointers, unless someone has a better suggestion for some. Is there anything I can do with the laptop burner diodes? They're shaped differently, a little wider and flatter.

If I do use the 16x's for pointers, I'll need a bunch of AixiZ housings for them, does anyone know where I could get some in bulk? Also, I've made one before by just hooking it up to 2 AA batteries and it didn't last too long. Is there a driver I could use with it? Specifically, is there some kind of driver I could buy cheap and in bulk as well or make a bunch myself? Currently my plan is to make a bunch and give them to friends at Burning Man this year, so I'd like them to hopefully be cheap enough to give away.

Question: what to do with 33 dvd burners
Answer: donate 10 to Livinloud who would happily take some off your hands

You need to send me at least 2 for this

You can get cheap drivers here http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Adjustab...LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53fa5005d1&_uhb=1 You can get housings here 5pcs 12 30mm Focusable Adjustable Housing Shell FOR 5 6mm TO 18 TO18 Laser Diode | eBay and you can get the pen housing here DIY Test Laser Penstlye Hosts FOR 12x60mm Laser Module | eBay

You may also want to get a lot of clicky pens for their springs.
Have a good one :beer:

Laik said:

You may also want to get a lot of clicky pens for their springs.
Have a good one :beer:

Click to expand...

No need to waste good pens, You can get them here:
https://www.fasttech.com/products/0...rydriver-contact-support-spring-for-flashligh

I would take the diodes out and connect them to a driver set all of them to about 180 mW and point them all on a rotating mirror to make a liquid-sky , looks lice to have 2 watt red liquid sky =)

IMHO it wouldn't be very wise to give your friends 200mW lasers at a massive party/festival because they probably have no idea how dangerous they are.

Thanks for the input, guys, I'll check out getting some of those AixiZ housings and drivers! I was thinking about 3D printing some hosts for them, but I'll see how that goes. I already have a whole little box of various springs. What kind of battery would I need to drive the diode with a driver such as the one listed?

Chances are I'll only be giving away about 5 or 6 of them to people I know to be responsible, and with the clear sky's, the amount of dust and sand in the air, and stars to point at, I don't think they'll have a hard time using it safely. But yes, safety and using them responsibly is always a concern.

The laptop burners may be 3.8mm diodes. Verify before buying 33 housings for 5.6mm

laptop ones may also be the flat plastic open diodes.

Also, desktop ones might have PBS cubes that are big enough to play with, along with dichroic mirrors that may have acceptable pass rate for other wavelengths (or not, you'd have to test them, they weren't made specifically for that)

And if any of the disc motors look like they are easy to wire up (i.e. apply 5V here and ground here, rather than stepper motors), might as well save those too.

Personally, I collect the metal rails that the sled slides on. They're useful for stuff I do, sturdy, smooth, easy to clean off gunk that gets stuck on 'em.

I usually ask my local computer repair shop if they have any old/broken dvd burners, they normally say no, but i know they have some :gun: So that raises the question... How did you get so many?

Attached are the diodes I've been able to pull. The 3 on the left are from the desktop burners, the 3 on the right are from the laptop. Not really sure as to what I can do with the laptop diodes, after some searching around on here, it seems like not much. That being said, if anyone on here can point me in a direction that could directly lead to me being able to use them (housings with lenses, drivers, and how to connect the laptop diodes), I'll send you 3 of them.

I didn't see any PBS cubes, but maybe some that are a bit more rectangular. I don't know much about them, so I've attached pictures of what's inside both of them (after the diodes and lenses are removed, and I have more that I can photograph as well if I missed something). I plan on using as much as I can from these drives, or at least harvesting stuff for later projects and tossing the rest (so my girlfriend can stop complaining about all the projects scattered everywhere). There are DC motors, but they're soldered directly to PCBs, which I'll probably try to remove. The steppers and linear carriages are nice; I was originally thinking of making another (smaller) 3D printer with some of them, but after reading about how awful the precision is compared to the steppers and control in my other machine, I might put them aside and try to make a small chocolate 3D printer to make custom candy where quality is less of an issue

As for where I got all of them, long story short, I know the systems admin of a school that was upgrading all of their computers. He said they get audited (because they're a nonprofit and can't sell the computers) and have to donate all of them, but when I told him I was working on a 'project' where I only needed the DVD drives, he said to go ahead and take what I wanted since they only record the number of computers, not specifically what's in them. Luckily they were all Dells, so it took all of about 40 seconds each to slide the tabs to open on the case, remove the drive, and close the case, so harvesting them all went pretty quick. They had more computers, but it looked like they were older and only had DVD drives, not burners. Too bad all the projectors were old and used bulbs as opposed to lasers. I think I might be going back there in a couple days, maybe I'll give it another look and see if there are any more hiding in the back. I also pulled a couple Fresnel Lenses from overhead projectors cause I figured they might come in handy at some point.

Another place I've been thinking about going to look for drives, which you might be able to do as well, is check out some of those E-Waste Recycling facilities where people bring their old stuff. I'm sure people trash good, working parts when something like their hard drive or power supply die and they get a whole new rig.

I do know one site where someone made a DIY housing for the laptop diodes.
Laser Diode Housing from Hardware Store Parts
It doesn't look like his housing has very much heat sinking or a good thermal connection to the diode so you might have to run the diodes at a lower power.
I never got the odd type of diode, so I can't talk from experience.
Hope this helps.

ok, so i just received 16 adjustable housings to fit the diodes, next big step is getting or making the drivers for them. i don't think they need to be exceptionally adjustable once i figure out the right output, so am i correct to think it would be easier and cheaper to just make a bunch of them as opposed to buying them? does anyone have the schematics for a driver to run this, and does anyone have any idea what a good power output would be for one of these diodes (red desktop 16x dvd burner)? also, i was able to press one diode into the housing successfully, and the 2nd one i tried seemed to kill the diode, so i didn't put any more in. i know there are some guides around here somewhere, but what's the best way to press it in? should i make some kind of tool for it?

If you're into pushing the diodes, the best driver would be a single AMC7135?
Its a 3 pin chip (kinda similar to a surface mount transistor) and it can be soldered directly to the diode.
BUT its fixed 350mA (sink). And it have little dropout... 0.12V by sheet specifications.

I'm driving one of my dvd burner reddies at 500mA and it didn't die yet... but lower speed burners = lower power diodes = lower current. So 350mA could be too much for 16x burners...

I'm thinking of making my own. I think I saw somewhere on here some simple circuit where a soldered on resister of a chosen resistance is what determines the output. Does anyone know what I'm talking about or where to find this? Since I don't have a spec sheet on these diodes, I don't know what power to drive them at. If 350mA could be too much, what should I shoot for?

It depends on the burner speed. Higher speed = higher power.