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Registered Member #54278
Joined: Sat Jan 17 2015, 04:42AM
Location: Amite, La.
Posts: 367
I once used a pair ripped out of hard drives as a galvo (x-y mirror scanner) and got some VERY impressive results. I was getting decent text and graphics compared to anything else I had used for a scanner...wrote some things on the town water tower at night with a green laser!!!
Later, I made a dot matrix font (8x8)--it's still unfinished, but the 'dots' seem to keep the dot/spacing ratio constant WRT distance--whether 10 feet or 100m!
Registered Member #96
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062
Interesting. I suppose that could work, though you'd need to be very careful not to damage the ribbon cables. Old drives might be better because the cables were made to last..
Registered Member #54278
Joined: Sat Jan 17 2015, 04:42AM
Location: Amite, La.
Posts: 367
No ribbon cables--if you are referring to me . IIRC, just a pair of small mirror pieces and a couple of wires from each magnet coils to an Apex Microelectronics dual power (source-sink) op-amps (Boy, I loved those things--and their app notes where did they go??) It was much more simple and impressive with stereo (one for each x-y channel) music. Pink Floyd would blow you away..."Comfortably Numb"!!!
Registered Member #3272
Joined: Mon Oct 04 2010, 11:40PM
Location: Beaverton, OR
Posts: 101
You would be much better off by buying a cheap set of galvos and drives off ebay. These galvos are closed loop, the voice coil in a hard drive relies on the tracks on the platters for feedback. You can get decent positioning but just using constant current but you really need feedback and a PID loop to get square corners.
Registered Member #54278
Joined: Sat Jan 17 2015, 04:42AM
Location: Amite, La.
Posts: 367
The square turns were hell--when you don't need all smooth curves! Anyway,1st try, I used two ultra thin x-y mirrors (Edmund 1/2" round) and used the light that seeped through as feedback for the closed loop. I recorded (for position reference) the though-light intensity over the angular range (IIRC: about +/- 10 degrees). Worked fair. Sometimes Meridith Instruments or Electronic Goldmine stock galvos--even ebay had a nice cheap mirror pair for green / blue light. I wanted to get one working like the laser-writer in the movie "Real Genius".
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Hard Drive Components.
. IIRC, just a pair of small mirror pieces and a couple of wires from each magnet coils to an Apex Microelectronics dual power (source-sink) op-amps (Boy, I loved those things--and their app notes 
where did they go??) It was much more simple and impressive with stereo (one for each x-y channel) music. Pink Floyd would blow you away..."Comfortably Numb"!!!
