Power Up a Toy Car -using CDROM Door Opening Mechanism

Picture this, you have finally decide to upgrade to a new laptop and recycle your old desktop computer at home after about 8 long year of service and then it strikes you - Your broken CDROM drive/hard disk is a treasure chest for parts, specifically motors and gears !!

Follow the instructable and learn how to use the door opening mechanism of the CDROM drive to power up a toy car. Which in my case as shown in the picture above, is a Snow removal tractor that bought from the dollar store.

This is also great instructable to do with Kids ages 8 years and above, and teach them the basic concepts of(follow the link below for more info..)

• Motors (How-To: Motors - by audreyobscura )
• Gear mechanism(Gears - Wiki)
• Pulley mechanism (Pulley - Wiki)
• Reusing and salvaging electronic components, in this case a CDROM(Disassembling a CD/DVD reader and reusing its parts - by Robson Couto)
• and basic soldering(How to Solder - by noahw)

Here are the things you'll need to complete the build

• Old CDROM drive
• Toy car from a dollar store
• Screw driver
• Pliers
• Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks
• Super glue

Electronic components, which you can find at your local electronic store like Radioshack.

• 2 AA batteries
• Battery Holder, when you buy one of these try and get one with an ON/OFF switch
• Solder
• Soldering Iron

To salvage the CDROM door Opening mechanism , unscrew the 4 screws on the lid and pop it off.

Now you should see a couple of screws attaching the PCB, unscrew them and using scissors cut of the white cables as shown in the picture above.

Put the PCB aside and turn the CD drive over to test the door opening mechanism.

Have your toe fingers crossed !! and test the door opening mechanism as shown in the video above by moving the tray up and down, ensure that the gears and the pulley mechanism move freely.

Now if your mechanism is functional, remove the CDROM tray by unlocking a couple of hinges at the side

Fire up your soldering Iron and desolder the motor from the PCB as shown in the picture above. In my case i managed to break the PCB while trying to pull it out.

Now using a saw , cut through the plastic just above the CD door locking mechanism and the joint at the side as shown in the picture above.

Be patient !! and Ensure that you do not damage the other components as you can build more awesome things out of the other components..

At this point if your new to Solder , it would be a good idea to go through the ible How to Solder - by noahw

Here start of by tinning the wires of the battery holder.

Then solder the battery holder wires to the motor as shown in the picture above.

Once you have soldering is done , load up the 2AA batteries in the battery holder and flip the switch to on give it a quick test to check if the gear and pulley mechanism is rotating.

Get the wheel of the toy and measure and cut a strand of wire as the same size, as shown in the second picture.

In my case here the diameter of the wire connecting the wheel was slightly thicker than hole in the big gear.

Now get the pulley and gear off the door opening mechanism and super glue the gear to the wire at the center as shown in the fourth picture above.

Now super glue the wheel to the wire.

In my case since the wire I am using is of a smaller diameter, I added super glue the edges and then some at the opening of the wheel were the wire would fit in.

Finally run a quick test by loading up the AA batteries in the holder as shown in the video above.

Before super glue the battery holder and the CDROM mechanism decide what goes where.

Now fire up your Hot Glue gun and glue the battery holder to the toy , followed by the CDROM door Opening mechanism. Hold the parts against for a few seconds till the hot glue hardens. You can also use super glue if you dont have a hot glue gun handy.

Congratulations you done!! and ready to take the toy out for a spin.