From the German Hackerspace Ffm comes this extremely robust DIY disc autoloader (translated)! We hope your German isn’t too rusty…
[David] was tired of copying his CD collection by hand, so he set out to make an open source DIY disc autoloader. His first prototype was this one, which we have to admit gets style points (it made use of a gaming PC tower as the enclosure).
One of his goals for the project was simplicity, and with that in mind he created a driverless solution, using mechanical actuators to do everything — all you have to do is plug in your computer to the drive. It makes use of a gripper taken from a notebook optical drive and a series of counterweights to pick up and deposit the disks. The frame is made of aluminum extrusion and the major functional brackets are all 3D printed.
To see it in action, stick around after the break. We personally like the use of the counterweight pulley in the back!
If you happen to have a CD collection big enough to justify this, he’s released all the files on the wiki (first link).
Lol, google translator really wasn’t build for informal texts or people ignoring proper spelling. Vorfürmodell should be Vorführmodell, gibts → gibt es, Funktiosprinzip → Funktionsprinzip, Viedeo → Video, usw.
The forces being exerted on the CDs seem a bit excessive, but otherwise interesting design.
Or you can just wait until you’re in the mood for a particular CD, and copy that one by hand.
We pump iron to get it done. Counterweights and load weight wow.
I have a freebe 400 disc changer that would nice to interface.
Using vacuum to pickup the discs would significantly speed up the process, it would also be less demanding on the discs and the CD/DVD drive…
Disc is for optical media, disk is for hard drives.
Lazy Germans
congradulation of counterbalancing, most people cant work that out!
Hi guys.
David Merges is the developer/hacker of this well balanced solution.
The gaming PC tower as the enclosure was his first prototype of the Autoloader.
I just submitted it.
Thx for publishing it!
Marcus A. Link