Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Hard Drives as lSharpening wheels *LINK*
Dan Clermont in Burnaby
>Has anyone ever tried taking an old 42 Meg HD with a 5" diameter disk running at 3200RPM and making it into a sharpening wheel?
I started taking apart an old HD at work and started to think I could maybe make one of these without spending allot of my hard earned money.
TIA,
DanClermont
Sharpening System
Re: Hard Drives as lSharpening wheels
Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida
>Way too fast and way too underpowered?
42meg not enough bits, 1G min to get sharp edge;-)
Eric Hedberg
>
Ingenuity *LINK*
WoodburnBob
>Dan, I like the idea. As far as I know, all the hard drives we have stored away as part of obsolete computer systems in our basements and garages are stepper motors.
There's quite a bit on the internet about novel uses for these motors. Rather than shafts, belts and pulleys to control speed and mechanical advantage, one apparently simply needs chips and software. If I recall correctly, stepper motors have enormous torque at low speeds and small angular increments.
I hope you take this all the way to a prototype you can share with us all. Good luck.
Stepper Motor
Oops! Sorry, I was thinking about floppies.
WoodburnBob
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Re: Ingenuity
Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida
>I believe that the stepper motors were/are what located the read/write heads.
Re: Ingenuity
Dan Donaldson
>Most of the drives that I have taken apart use a modified form of a gage movement to control the heads. The is what the big magnets are for. Something like a stepper motor is too slow for that kind of an application. The sled for the laser in a cd is usually motor driven, but they do not have the access speed requirements that a hard drive has.
:)
Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX
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Re: Hard Drives as lSharpening wheels
Dan Clermont in Burnaby
>I have found that by using a finger to applypressure to the drive it slows down.
So maybe the high RPM's and the low power may be alright.
I am thinking about giving it a try.
Dan Clermont
Re: Ingenuity
Mike G.
>In an old issue of FWW, there is an article where a guy made a sharpening system out of a used garbage disposal. It looked pretty neat...as a matter of fact, I saved a disposal from our last remodel to see if I could make one myself. 8^)
Mike G.
Re: Ingenuity
Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida
>I think that we are talking about two different things. I believe that you were taking apart "modern" hard drives. That stepper motor was out of a micro-floppy disk drive. You know, Clunk-clunk, clunk-clunk, ratchety, rachety glurch.
Re: Hard Drives as lSharpening wheels
Ernie Miller Topeka
>I collect 8 track tapes and have several players but I also have a bunch of record turn tables I wonder how one of them would work? A guy might even be able to rig a blade holder on the tone arm. 1/8" plexi glass or even glass platters to hold the sand paper or grit and you are off and spinning.