Fun things to do with CD/DVD? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: kalel
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2018, 04:13:34 am
content: I was wondering about any and all fun electronics related things to do with a CD/DVD disc - not drive (besides actually using it to store data, unless it is by some DIY method which would likely not be useful).Do you know of any to share?

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2018, 04:50:48 am
content: Pin it up on a board and try to get all your shots in the X ring (center hole)

author: BU508A
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2018, 06:56:47 am
content: You could buld your own optical spectroscope:http://www.bernd-loibl.de/spectra.htmlSorry, the site is in german, but maybe google translate can help.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2018, 11:53:15 am
content: Microwaving them is fun.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 02:56:14 pm
content: Years ago when we cleaned up our office we found stacks and stacks of old software CDs, as tend to build up after years in the computer business. So for a while we had fun tossing one up and whacking it with a baseball bat. Great fun, however cleaning up the floor afterwards was a bit of a chore. Pieces were found in various corners for months.When struck with force, a CD will shatter into tons of small fragments of acrylic plastic.

author: NivagSwerdna
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 03:00:01 pm
content: I use 4 to keep Herons away from my fish pond.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 07:22:42 pm
content: Attach them to a high speed spindle such as a rotary tool and spin them up until they shatter. Make sure you are out of the path when this happens though. I did it with an AOL CD in my bedroom when I was about 14 holding it over my head and I found bits of CD stuck in the walls. Years later I was still finding small flakes hiding in areas the vacuum couldn't easily reach.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 07:27:27 pm
content: TV ad from a few years back here in NZ.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 09:20:19 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 18, 2018, 07:22:42 pmI watched a pioneer slot loading drive do this to someone’s entire life works backup DVD once.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 18, 2018, 10:12:20 pm
content: Must have been a flaw in the disc because those drives didn't spin anywhere near as fast as a rotary tool. I had one of those slot load DVD drives, I bought it initially because it was SCSI. Used it for years, finally sold the old PC it was in just a couple years ago.

author: fourtytwo42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 07:25:32 am
content: I use them as bird scarers on my vegitable patch, saves me building an electronic one

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 09:24:17 am
content: Quote from: james_s on January 18, 2018, 10:12:20 pmThe disk was definitely cracked for it to explode like that. Plus a stupid bug the pioneer drives did which was if it couldn't read the disk TOC it would spin the disk up as fast as it could for some reason. If you put a fucked up disk in one it'd go mental. We had one eject a spinning disk as well which was interesting as it popped out, hit the floor and shot off under a cupboard. Didn't have that much momentum; was more a slow comedy speedThen we bought Plextor drives in.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 06:59:33 pm
content: I've been meaning to try driving the spindle motor in an old CD/DVD drive with one of my RC BLDC speed controllers to see how fast I can make it go. I've done that with a broken server hard drive spindle and the thing sounded like a jet engine spooling up. It kept accelerating until I reached the current limit of my bench PSU delivering around 24V. I was actually slightly concerned about catastrophic mechanical failure, that stack of ~8 platters spinning at probably 20k+ RPM has a LOT of kinetic energy.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 07:10:57 pm
content: They are the raw material of creativity. They are great circle templates for two hole sizes. A durable leveling pad for that wobbly bench. A sort of durable carpet protector for benches and tables. Two with three standoffs makes the basics of a round project box. Two or more fixed at an angle to a hub make a propeller, which can be an even more effective bird scarer. The ammunition for a supersized disc gun. A good start towards a miniature Wimshurst machine.Add a heat gun and they become lids and covers for many things.Time to fire up a variant of the TRIZ methodology for solutions looking for a problem. TRIZ as normally employed looks for solutions to a problem.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 07:41:50 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 19, 2018, 06:59:33 pmIf you do that, make sure you video it and post it

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 07:51:58 pm
content: I'm a nutjob who still uses CDs and DVDs to hold my data. One idea is scraping the media off the disc, heating it up with fire, and blowing bubbles with it.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 08:13:00 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 18, 2018, 07:22:42 pmIn my younger, more foolish, days I did the same thing with a scrap 14" RL02 removable platter and hub and an electric drill. I had it just sitting with the conical recess on top of the chuck. Luckily it jumped off before it got to the full drill speed, but it took off around the room like a scalded cat! It took a few chunks out of the plaster on the walls before hitting the floor. When it stopped spinning, it had a fringe of burnt/melted carpet around its rim.It was only afterwards that I realized that I could have decapitated and/or killed myself!I guess you could do yourself some serious damage with CD shrapnel too!

author: metrologist
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 08:18:38 pm
content: the slo mo guys blew up a disc, in real slow motion.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 09:35:02 pm
content: Quote from: Gyro on January 19, 2018, 08:13:00 pmHah! That's quite an image!I did something vaguely similar with a flywheel on a capstan shaft from an old cassette deck. I put it in the chuck of a rotary tool and slowly spun it up to probably 20,000 RPM. Then the polished shaft walked its way out of the chuck and the flywheel dropped down onto the carpet, did a burnout complete with a puff of smoke and then took off across the room at crazy speed. Smacked straight into the door and repeatedly bounced about a foot off the ground trying to roll straight up the door before it lost enough speed to settle into place and melt another small patch in the carpet.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 19, 2018, 11:02:19 pm
content: I had one of those little cheap RS540 motor based 12v drills when I was a kid. So many missed opportunities for carnage I am seeing now I look back

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2018, 12:34:56 am
content: Quote from: james_s on January 18, 2018, 10:12:20 pmThe 52x and 56x drives ran at aminimumabove 10k rpm which is up where a typical electric rotary tool will operate, there are people trying to extrapolate the constant linear velocity scaling of audio CDs to the speed multipliers of CD-ROMs but for the high speed drives they were driven with constant angular velocity. I'm unsure drives would run above 20k rpm as thats close to the failure speed of brand new CDs with no visible flaws.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 20, 2018, 01:40:44 am
content: Quote from: Someone on January 20, 2018, 12:34:56 amThe slot load drive wasn't that fast, if I remember correctly it was 32x. Still spun the disc up pretty fast but not as fast as some of the later ones.