Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #05976
To: beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Justin jaf60@student.canterbury.ac.nz
Date: Tue, 07 Sep 1999 05:09:23 +1200
Subject: [alt-beam] CD-ROM read-head feet
This one has _got_ to have come up before, but it's new to me:
I needed some tiny screws, and found some in the reading head of an old
CD-ROM I had pulled to bits. Upon getting my screws, the head fell to
bits . I started fiddling with the bits, and hooked them up with
power.
As you probably know, in addition to the motors, the lense's position is
fine-tuned with coils and magnets. Playing with these, I found the head
had quite a lot of freedom of movement, and quite a lot of grunt (very
strong magnets, very fine wire, many winds). It can move up, down, left
and right. IOW, hook it up to a microcore and you have a one-footed
walker that can AFAICS do anything a two motor walker can. Hook it up to
something with more states and it can do more (such as turn left or
right). Even running the coils off a tiny 470uF cap was enough for them
to twitch their metal casing off the ground. Use a battery and they
practically leap...
I took apart another head, from a different brand, and this one moved
up, down, pivot left, pivot right - even more useful.
I suspect, however, the easiest application is for BEAMish art - take
the butterfly (or whatever) on a stick, put the stick on the head
arrangement, and connect a standard audio plug to the coils (left
channel to one coil set, right channel the other), plug it into your amp
and watch the butterfly conduct an orchestra in stereo :-)
(I suspect the butterfly will spend most of its time conducting the
drums and ignoring the strings, but that's butterflies for you... :)
Stick an LED on the end of the stick instead, or a laser diode, and have
an annoying "light show" on the roof.
Which reminds me - as far as I know, the light from CD-ROM drive laser
diodes is invisible, but this doesn't sit well with the explicit laser
warnings on the case and instructions not to look at the beam. Can
anyone enlighten me as to what the story is?
5977 Mon, 06 Sep 1999 14:51:21 -0300 [alt-beam] Re: CD-ROM read-head feet alt-beam@egroups.com michael.hirtle@ns.sympatico.ca (Michael Hirtle) well it means don't look into the light :-).
it will burn your retna(sp) and u will be blind
Justin wrote:
> This one has _got_ to have come up before, but it's new to me:
> I needed some tiny screws, and found some in the reading head of an old
> CD-ROM I had pulled to bits. Upon getting my screws, the head fell to
> bits . I started fiddling with the bits, and hooked them up with
> power.
> As you probably know, in addition to the motors, the lense's position is
> fine-tuned with coils and magnets. Playing with these, I found the head
> had quite a lot of freedom of movement, and quite a lot of grunt (very
> strong magnets, very fine wire, many winds). It can move up, down, left
> and right. IOW, hook it up to a microcore and you have a one-footed
> walker that can AFAICS do anything a two motor walker can. Hook it up to
> something with more states and it can do more (such as turn left or
> right). Even running the coils off a tiny 470uF cap was enough for them
> to twitch their metal casing off the ground. Use a battery and they
> practically leap...
> I took apart another head, from a different brand, and this one moved
> up, down, pivot left, pivot right - even more useful.
>
> I suspect, however, the easiest application is for BEAMish art - take
> the butterfly (or whatever) on a stick, put the stick on the head
> arrangement, and connect a standard audio plug to the coils (left
> channel to one coil set, right channel the other), plug it into your amp
> and watch the butterfly conduct an orchestra in stereo :-)
> (I suspect the butterfly will spend most of its time conducting the
> drums and ignoring the strings, but that's butterflies for you... :)
>
> Stick an LED on the end of the stick instead, or a laser diode, and have
> an annoying "light show" on the roof.
>
> Which reminds me - as far as I know, the light from CD-ROM drive laser
> diodes is invisible, but this doesn't sit well with the explicit laser
> warnings on the case and instructions not to look at the beam. Can
> anyone enlighten me as to what the story is?
>
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