HDD magnets used to repair clothes dryer

Be careful with those. They're very brittle, and can shatter when they snap together. You might think that the magnetic field would control the shards, but it doesn't.

When the magnets crash together and shatter, the strength goes way down, and the shards come out *really fast*.

Isaac

I once used a motor from an old dryer to fix a hard drive.

No, Really!

Is there such a thing as a SAE vs metric torx? I see only a tool ID number but no dimensions specified.

One item one should check though is if there is a centre pin in the screw fastener's recess. If so it will require a driver tool bit with a hole in the center to accept this pin. I think the tools are described as security bit sets. When these security fasteners first came out there were no tools available but I was able to get around it by drilling the hole with a dental burr (drill bit) in the torx driver.

One of those huge cabinet drives that held about 5mb and had a good sized induction motor driving the spindle?

My memory is fading since I last serviced those 20MB HDs some 20 years ago. They weighed at least 100 lbs and took two guys to lift it because there's no way to put one's arms around one to do any lifting. It would also have hurt many backbones. The drive's mass was a design decision to provide inertia to dampen out any outside vibrations such as someone slamming a door or a heavy guy walking nearby. Plus that voice coil's seek operations shook the whole drive like a rat caught by a terrier. The RW head was the size of a stick of gum and it provided us service guys a good paying job because they crashed often enough for the computer customer to pay big bucks to be on a service contract. I think the platters were 14 inch diameter and when the RW head touched the surface it gouged out a deep groove into the aluminium.

On 3 May 2005 23:39:22 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black) put finger to keyboard and composed:

The 300MB drives weighed ~600lb. Years ago a scrap dealer paid me ~$70 for the aluminium deck, and I'm now using the frame as a tool trolley.

- Franc Zabkar

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Please remove one 's' from my address when replying by email.

opening

anything

conceded

matter of

I had the same problem. Just use some wire cutters to get the screws broken loose then they can be removed easily with some strategically placed explosives. The magnets are great for finding tiny springs in the carpet. Did you know that a magnet stops working when it's heated? You can stick one to the burner grate and turn on the flame and it will fall off. (and never really recovers either) Cheers Davy

A friend rolled a tin of (expensive) paint off his moored boat into about 15 feet of water, about 20 mins of fishing with a big magnet retrieved it, much to his relief.

Nothing you're likely to find in common motors, but very high performance normal motors, and especially linear motors, use larger version of the highest strength latest rare earth magnets.

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And don't forget those alignment packs that cost something like $1500 and usually got trashed because someone missed replacing one of the heads that crashed. :( :)

The drives were tough though. Someone gave us a couple of CDC washing machine type drives but they were several blocks away. So, we wheeled over city streets just on their casters. Powered right up and wored for several years without problems. :)

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If you don't plan to reuse the fasteners as a security measure, you can usually break the pin off and then use a regular tool to remove them. Use either needlenose pliers or a hammer and punch.

WT

That's the sort of thing you'd see in Edmund Scientific ads and catalogs years ago. They were one of the obvious places to get really strong magnets before we had a wealth of items to take apart and salvage magnets from.

Michael

I ran into the same situation, but wasn't willing to simply trash the drive (security reasons). So I drilled out the screws until I could get inside. Cute little platters - I hated to bend them all up by jamming a screwdriver into them ...

Bill Jeffrey

Yeah, we had those on the aircraft carrier I was on. Huge washing machine size hard drives, with the removable packs. There were about 6 of them installed, as I recall.

One problem: Air ops was not required to tell anyone before beginning operations, and the occasional pilot doing a fly-by was not required to call us before performing said procedure.

Every month, at least one pilot would do a fly-by.

BOOOM

Crash Crash Crash Crash Crash

You could hear the heads getting shredded on the drives. I always thought it was funny, but I wasn't the one that had to fix them or do the restore.

Maybe you can use them around your shop. They're probably the flattest surfaces you've ever touched.

Isaac

:On Mon, 02 May 2005 20:39:31 -0400, Dan : wrote: : :>I just had to post this. While ago the original hard drive went out in : :snip : :>catch! Further justification for my "never throw ANYTHING out" policy ;-) :>

: : :Ahah, me too. My barn is full of good treasures. The magnets off :ex-Microwave magnetrons are also pretty good, not that powerful, but :they are large. Ideal for many things around the workshop, holding :things while welding, holding the chuck key on the side of the :drill-press, etc ,etc.

I took the magnets out of two microwaves over the last few weeks. Ring magnets, reasonably strong. : :One of the best things to strip down are old photocopiers, motors, :switches, LV and HV PSUs, LEDs, gears, lamps and lots of other stuff.

What do you get out of those things? : :The stupid EU does not need their WEEE directive, I'm doing my best !!

Could you translate this? Thanks!

Dan

: :Barry Lennox :

:On Tue, 3 May 2005 08:22:37 +0100, "N Cook" wrote: : :>

:>> Dan :>

:>A near neighbour managed to drop his car keys down a drain in the street :>just as he was to drive to an airport. I tied an ex-5 1/4 magnet to a piece :>of string vertically and he went fishing. It came up with his keys on first :>attempt. :>

:>Diverse Devices, Southampton, England :>electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on : :A friend rolled a tin of (expensive) paint off his moored boat into :about 15 feet of water, about 20 mins of fishing with a big magnet :retrieved it, much to his relief.

Back when I was working on the docks one day something dropped into the bilge of the boat. I dropped a large magnet from a piece of thin nylon cord and found a great screwdriver that I have to this day. I have that horseshoe magnet as well, bought for a pretty penny at the hardware store.

: snipped-for-privacy@unisys.com (Arthur Shapiro) writes: : :> In article , Dan wrote: :> >I just had to post this. :> :> The last time I replaced a disk drive, I couldn't find a means of opening :> it to grab the magnets. It wasn't Torx, security Torx, allen, or anything :> else I had in my reasonably well-equipped set of wrenches. Finally conceded :> defeat and discarded it. :> :> Did I have an oddball (don't remember the brand) or was it simply a matter of :> me being an idiot and not having a common tool? : :You'd have to describe the screw heads or whatever. I've yet to come up :against a dead harddrive I couldn't get open reasonably non-destructively. : I read a post from someone suggesting that some of these drives may have some toxic chemicals in them. Is this true or false?

:Arthur Shapiro wrote: :> In article , Dan : wrote: :> >I just had to post this. :>

:> The last time I replaced a disk drive, I couldn't find a means of :opening :> it to grab the magnets. It wasn't Torx, security Torx, allen, or :anything :> else I had in my reasonably well-equipped set of wrenches. Finally :conceded :> defeat and discarded it. :>

:> Did I have an oddball (don't remember the brand) or was it simply a :matter of :> me being an idiot and not having a common tool? :>

:> Art : : :I had the same problem. Just use some wire cutters to get the screws :broken loose then they can be removed easily with some strategically :placed explosives. The magnets are great for finding tiny springs in :the carpet. Did you know that a magnet stops working when it's heated? :You can stick one to the burner grate and turn on the flame and it will :fall off. (and never really recovers either) Cheers :Davy

That's probably because the magnetic dipoles whose cumlulative magnetic field give the magnet its net power are able to rearrange position when the metal gets hot enough. Once their original orientation is lost, they never regain it when cooled. Never, that is, unless they cool in a strong magnetic field (which would cause them all to line up parallel again before the cooling process)!

Dan