Recover bearings from old HDD for Robot building

I asked my brother to share the technological steps of this useful process and give us a how-to tutorial using a slide show. If you have experience with this you still can review the pictures and have fun as basically this is HDD destruction! 🙂

Sources I used:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive

Let’s see the steps!

1. HDD Top View : the subject of this post. (Stickers have been removed)

2. HDD Bottom View

3. PCB (printed circuit board) removal.  It is definitely worth using appropriate screwdriver.

Just a quick check list how many exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives

4. Cover removal

5. Upper magnet removal. In some cases you do not even need screwdriver.

6. Actuator removal. This unit can be fixed on many different ways. Normal screwdriver is enough.

7. Disassemble of actuator to recover bearing block. This is fixed with screw but can be glued or molded. In these cases you need to saw from two directions to avoid unnecessary tensions. First you would say it can be pushed into axial direction as a much easier method. Unfortunately the outside ring is not really accessible or double-side assembled which means that normal (bigger bearing removal) technic can not be used. These very small bearings are very sensitive stuff. If they are glued you can cause damage easily.

8. Lucky case: no damage and we have the required size of bearings 🙂 How can you check the size of the bearings without previous steps? Good question. Disassemble and check 🙂

9. Activate your saw and you can recover two wonderful bearings : ext./int. diam.: 9mm / 5mm (width 3mm). Almost 5$ / piece! It worths. Build your own business on this type of recovery if you have a good HDD source and a lot of time!

10. Spindle removal

11. The HDD motor is visible at last! (Data Leak Prevention step: in the background take a quick screwdriver treatment and folding on the platter(s) 🙂 🙂 🙂

Any chance to get back my saved games??

12. Using vise and special tool you can press out the bearing housing.

13. Favourite action again: sawing 🙂 As a result we have another two bearings: ext./int. diam.: 13mm / 5mm (width 3mm). A bit cheaper but still valuable parts.

Note: On the top of the recovered stuff an aluminium frame and a cover remain for later use.

Robot upper arm review

Here is a new excellent video recorded by my brother. This is how the upper arm designed to transfer torque. I think you have seen many of the components in the previous post. This design was born after many versions. They were “tested” only in mind 🙂 but we hope this structure can work. The question is very simple (how the leg/arm should look like?) but unfortunately the answer  has to cover technical aspects not just a “looking good” wish. Your comments are greatly appreciated!

Robot body parts in production

Thanks to my brother’s excellent and hard work many of the robot parts are ready!!! 😀 After half-year research and development we can share a lot of photos of these parts. I am not really the right person to explain what they are 🙂 and how they were produced but as a programmer I can … upload them 🙂 This is the real stuff and a huge step of robot building! Viewing these pictures you can image how complex is to design and produce any of them. If you do not have your own factory and CNC park (this is our case) it is really difficult to complete. I am not a hardware expert and I really admire this type of result and any one who has experience of this area. All I know is that they are made of aluminium with the help of many different technologies. Every and each has its story…

We would like to thank to all who helped (and still supporting us) making any robot part or special device, tool or even let us use his machines: Miklós, Józsi, Jani, Balázs

Few links I used for translation and learning basics for this post:

http://www.mcmaster.com/

http://translate.google.hu/ 🙂

Closer look:

My favourite part so let me add another pic 🙂