Convert a DVD-R Drive into a Lab scanner

Posted Sep 25th 2007 12:16PM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laser hacks, misc hacks

[bodiby] was first to send in this New Scientist article about converting a DVD drive into a lab scanner. I did some digging and came up with the details. Here's the paper describing the process and results. Here's a basic schematic and description of the mod. A set of samples is placed onto a CDR. A photo sensor is used to locate the samples on the CD, while the laser is fired through each sample. A planar photodiode is used to measure the attenuation of the laser as it's transmitted through each sample. Sadly, I couldn't find any details on the custom control electronics.

Reader Comments

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1. Now that's a nice hack.

Posted at 3:29PM on Sep 25th 2007 by Tony

2. I had actually had an idea similar to this but using 3 1/2 inch drive components and a glass disc. This way is much smarter for a variety of reasons. I had always reasoned that the resolution on floppies would be high, but 300,000 spots per disc is awesome. The system I use now does 30,000 with great difficulty and costs are high (100$ per array for materials, not labour).

Posted at 5:52PM on Sep 25th 2007 by michael mcwilliams

3. yeah!! - i finally got one in!!

Posted at 7:56PM on Sep 25th 2007 by bodiby

4. Great hack.

btw first link seems to be: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12688&feedId=online-news_rss20

Posted at 10:44PM on Sep 25th 2007 by japroach

5. Sounds cool!

Posted at 5:05AM on Sep 26th 2007 by splitice

6. to #1

Agreed, meets the definition of hack to a T.

Posted at 6:18PM on Sep 26th 2007 by Wolf

7. I think there's no custom electronics just custom software. The CDR is a standard device.

I saw a presentation on "Beyond Tomorrow" a few years ago

Posted at 2:31AM on Sep 27th 2007 by Darth Hakius

8. That can be but not sure!

Posted at 6:45AM on Sep 27th 2007 by Allison

9. very nice!

The paper mentions that the custom electronics consisted of a photodiode for sensing the transmittance (a Silonex SLSD-71N6), a jellybean reflective photosensr for reading the index/timing mark (Omron EE-SY125) and a USB data-acquisition board (Data Translation DT9823A-02). Not immediately clear whether they wired up some signal-conditioning circuitry in between the sensors and the DAQ.

Posted at 12:06AM on Sep 28th 2007 by wim

10. hmmm, the stupid blog software ate all my URLs. well, Google will find you info on each of those parts as easily as it did for me, I guess.

Posted at 12:32AM on Sep 28th 2007 by wim

11. It seem to be very powerfull!

Posted at 3:45AM on Sep 28th 2007 by Rasta

12. it sucks people here are all fucking gay geeks and nerds

Posted at 7:37PM on Sep 30th 2007 by ghfh

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