Laser shutter using a hard disk drive voice-coil actuator

From School of Physics OPTICS GROUP , The University of Melourne Link...
We have developed a high-speed laser shutter based on voice-coil actuators found in generic hard disk drives: Maguire LP, Szilagyi S and Scholten RE, High performance laser shutter using a hard disk drive voice-coil actuator, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 75 (9) 3077–3079 (2004). Detail...

Related:

• Hackedgadgets.com Link...
• A solenoid-based laser safety shutter.
  

Hard Disk Generator

This one of the smaller piles of Hard Disks that I receive a couple of times per year.
My 2 main sources are a local computer recycler that has saved me upwards of 200 drives in a single load, and a pair of chums that work in the I.T. Sector and save me what ever goes bad on their network.
This load represents about 2 weeks of evenings stripping down the drives and sorting the scrap into various piles. The Aluminum frames are recovered for the foundry and are an excellent stock as they flow nicely and are easy to machine. The yellow bucket of "Platter Hub Motors" needs to be melted twice, once to reduce the Alum from the internal metallic parts, and the second time for what ever project is underway. More.. , 2, 3, 4, 5

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HDRack

The designers of my computer case, the bright men of design had gathered their brainpower together and the result was a very poorly functioning HD/floppy drive stand, so I had to help myself with this one. Not that much of a mod, but a handy trick. So, this is the story of how I got a functioning, cheap and easy-to-make attachment for several HDs
I happened to have some of those AT-aged backpanels which had places of 9 and 25 pinned serial ports. I just clipped the connectors off the plates and, lookie lookie, the HD frame starts to be finished. Detail...

HDD Clock

From Harry Andreou | 88bytes
After watching an interesting article DIY of a Hard Disk Clock, i decided to make my own, HDD plate clock More...

Wind Generator with Hard Drive Magnets

By mrkooo From Otherpower.com Discussion Borad
I decided to build my first wind generator. No problems with the blades, they are 1m each (2m diameter rotor), I try them without load and work fine, very happy when I saw running so fast. But with the alternator, is anoother story, is very hard to get the magnets here in Peru, so I used HD magnets, I broke them in 2 pieces in order to have one pole. The problem is that nopw I have very little magntes. My winds are #21 wire and 160 turns, I expect to obtain al least 12V to charge a battery. Detail...

See Also...

• Hard Drive Generator From Hacker Gadgets

Wind turbine from Harddisk

By Brian S. Julin Link...
Another fantastically easy wind turbine, made with a hard-drive motor with the right type of pressure plate and some identical paper clips about as long as the drive radius. Again, there is really nothing to explain that the pictures don't easily convey, except I had to be careful not to strip the tiny soft-metal plate nuts. The resulting product is actually very well balanced when spinning.
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