DIY hard drive clock (part 1)

Hard drive dissected.

Now it's time to take hard drive apart and see what we can reuse.
My victim is SCSI Fujitsu brand with spindle speed 4400 RPM. Full disk revolution takes 13.64 mSec.

Hard drive. Open and eager to get new guts. 

Some parts definitely can be reclaimed for other projects.
Voice coil actuator; can be used as laser beam shutter or as simple galvo. 
Couple very strong neodymium magnets; those may be used in solar pendulum  toy.
Hard drive platter itself is highly reflective and can be used as front surface mirrors for laser spirograph project.

DIY hard drive clock (intro)

Hard drive clock. New life for old junk.

Technical idea is pretty old but making things is fun and hard drive clock itself is very cool and entertaining device.
It's quite easy to build one and I'm sure that most  DIY-makers have some unwanted PC hardware that can be easily put into service again.

Obsolete hard drives. Are they good for something?

Beside hard drive itself, for this project we need microcontroller, real time clock, photo interrupter or Hall effect sensor and bunch of RGB LEDs. All this stuff is widely available. 

DIY laser spirograph (part 7)

PIC18F1320 based controller for laser spirograph. Final release. Ready for order.

Well, I think, prototyping stage for laser spirograph project is over and it's time to release final design for DIY community.
For final controller I've ordered factory-made double sided PCB with lovely green solder mask (people always wonder why my home-made PCBs are not green ;-))

PCB fabricated by Futurlec

PCBs are made by Futurlec. It's my first order from this Thailand based company and I'm quite happy with quality of work and service. Lead time is about one week. There's no minimum order but price is really good if to order in quantity.

Along with Gerber file format they accept files from most PCB CAD software like Altium, Eagle, Orcad, Protel. Within days they send back images of processed PCB layers for confirmation and correction (if needed) and within week manufacture PCBs.
And yes, they sell parts too ;-)