Motor from CD-ROM

A CD-ROM drive, from a standard PC, has a stepper motor secured in it that pushes the draw backwards and forwards at the push of a button. As I had an old CD-ROM that wasn't being used I decided to try and take it apart to see how it worked, if it could be reused for my project.

I started by removing the casing around the CD-ROM, which simply involved unscrewing some small screws. Once inside the drive, it was clear that although the motor was visible from the side that it could not be easily accessed. In order to get closer to the motor, the tray and some of the circuitry had to be removed, which although it was a risk that it would break the drive, was still necessary. As predicted one of the circuit boards broke, but this did allow access to the motor. It was interesting to see how small the motor was (pictured below), but then it only has to provide a small amount of torque to be able to power the movement of the tray.







Although, I don't think that the motor will be able to be used in the project it was interesting to see how it works, in terms of the cogs that are attached and it was a visual way of understanding the operation of the motor, i.e. the chain of operation.