using motors from burned HDD

[petroaguia]

1-HDD motors can be very useful in many projects, due to it´s power, quality, etc.
2-Normally we have a bunch of them at home or office (so, cheap...)
3-Normally the motors are OK and it´s board drivers too...

4- BUT, they are hard to control if we have to do a driver for them.

5- On other hand, the controler board is there, and in all that I have and tested, the motor driver is ok... for that, use a PC power supply, connect it to the drive and it will spin for a wile... and then stops...

6- So, the question: There is "generic"  way to control the driver in the controler boards? Or some other simpler way to do it?

Thanks i advance
PetroAguia

[CocaCola]

The read/write motor is a common stepper motor the spindle motor is a brushless dc motor....

You can Google both types of motor controllers, and find a plethora of information and circuits...

[petroaguia]

Hi CocaCola, thanks

In fact read/write heads in HDD are a coil inside a neodymium magnet, so, pulses are needed to move tem in a circular way. In Google you find a lot of projects on how to transform them in a loudspeaker, etc.

But I couldn´t find at google any way to use the spindle motor driver present in the controler board. The motor is a 3 phase BLDC motor, normaly with a speed measurement output, but more than 1 A...

But I guess that could not be impossible to "cut" the input for the driver IC  from the rest of the controler board and there, inject pulses or voltage or whatever to control motor speed.
As these are 1A or more motors, to do a BLCD driver, beside pulses generation, we will have do do some complex and not cheap eletronics. And, as the driver is there at controler board by free, could we not use this driver?

[Parmin]

BLDC controller (the spindle) is a common stuff, you can find the info in sites such as Microchip or TI or whatever chip manufacturer are, or as CocaCola suggest, google for them.
I have seen a plethora of silly gadgets made of the spindle of old HDD from LED clocks, grinders or even tennis ball thrower.
http://www.miskei.hu/ttrobot/index.html
http://www.ian.org/HD-Clock/
http://metku.net/index.html?sect=view&path=mods/hdd_grinder/index_eng

LOL

Voice coil (the read/write head) can be controlled by PWM, again plenty of data on Google.
It is very easy to find so I wont give example..

[CocaCola]

In fact read/write heads in HDD are a coil inside a neodymium magnet, so, pulses are needed to move tem in a circular way.

As I said it's a stepper motor...

But I couldn´t find at google any way to use the spindle motor driver present in the controler board.

Why bother?  It's easy enough to make one tailored to your new design, no need to deal with whatever proprietary design is on any particular driver board...

But I guess that could not be impossible to "cut" the input for the driver IC  from the rest of the controler board and there, inject pulses or voltage or whatever to control motor speed.

Yes, make yourself a new driver circuit at the end of the day it's likely going to be your best option...

As these are 1A or more motors, to do a BLCD driver, beside pulses generation, we will have do do some complex and not cheap eletronics. And, as the driver is there at controler board by free, could we not use this driver?

Well, I beg to differ, it's not complex nor expensive to create your own driver board...  For me time is money, yes the existing driver board is 'free' but the time spent trying to 'make' it work will negate any savings...  Of course it will differ by drive, but most of today's drives use proprietary chip sets, you are likely not going to find much information about them if anything...

[petroaguia]

BLDC controller (the spindle) is a common stuff, you can find the info in sites such as Microchip or TI or whatever chip manufacturer are, or as CocaCola suggest, google for them.

Thanks Parmin
You are right, there is a lot of these projects on google and youtube. But most of todays HDs dont stay running for long time, just feeding a PC power on it. After some time all they stop to spindle. Only very, very old hds seems to run just with power supply, at least iw what some tell at google.

So, the points here are 2, in fact:
1- keep motor running
2- to be able to control motor speed.
I also tried to find manuals for the IC´s that are the controlers on these boards, and have no luck on any one (neither to maintain them running). I have tested more than 10 HDDs...


Posted on: December 18, 2013, 10:41:05 22:41 - Automerged
Hi CocaCola

So, seems to me there is not a "simple" way to do it, I mean, without a driver of myself.... Maybe about 6 transistors in bridge, a PIC to control them, be carefull to not short circuit them, and also read motor speed to control the BLDC pulses.....
I thought that could be simpler to use the driver inside the controler board... At end, they are there for that...

[CocaCola]

Petroaguia, I guessing you have little or no electronics knowledge?

[robotai]

Why it is "bad" HDD? Doesn't it normally mean bad driver or controller? (Usually, motor is hardly to burn) So utilize original driver may not success. More difficulty is, the driver is tightly integrated with original controller. Use it may be far difficult than simply buy or build one.

You won't think HDD vendor will provide us a well designed modules so we can easily re-assemble it into different purpose for non-HDD usage. Do you?

[Parmin]

But most of todays HDs dont stay running for long time, just feeding a PC power on it. After some time all they stop to spindle. Only very, very old hds seems to run just with power supply, at least iw what some tell at google.

You asked questions, and I believe every person who replied has supplied valid answer. 
Yet you seems to ignore the suggestion and kept on rambling on some irrelevant issue.

We can only suggest solution to you, you will do what you want to do.
Alles Gute, Hals- und Beinbruch und gesundheit!

[petroaguia]

First of all, thanks you all your answers. I´m not in any way ignoring or refusing any answer... all them helped a lot, and sorry if it seems any other way.

My intention is exactly the oposit.  
I´m trying to promote an ample discussion on the subject, as HDD motors are always arround and can be very helpfull in random projects. At the end, I would like that this topic would be something like "if you need to use a motor, here is the simple and straight way to use it now!" To do a sander, a pow, or even another more complex usage. I couldn´t find at google/youtube anything like that, that really works

So, I thought this topic shoud have 2 subtopics:
1- how to make it to sipindle non-stoping, moslty for on spot projects, like sanding, pov, etc -> maybe a jumper at some connector or whatever at some circuit point?  It´s clear for me from all motors I tried, they try to "read" something (spinning and moving head) and being unsucessfull after some time, turn off spindle. By sure they have distinct circuits, but probably there is a way to "inhibit" this turn off in general terms, or the concept on how to do it at least.
2- how to control motor speed -> this by sure is more complex, and I foresse 2 ways:
    

• using just the driver IC at the controler board, that are ok on most of the boards. I guess that they have a pin where you can inject pwm pulses (period or frequency) to control speed or something else, even as a generic concept
• making a generic driver circuit, where we could inject a frequency and it change velocity according to this frequency. This to be used in more specific projects. On this case, a plain project or a project using as a basis one of those IC´s used in BLDC PC fans, with some extra transistors? Or an specific IC?

So, in resume, these are the intentions at this post.

Hi CocaCola, I have some experience in eletronics, but as probably most of the users at this forum, I´m trying to learn more, and if possible, help others. And, specifically here my intention was to see if someone else had dealed with HDDs motors, and as you can see by the number of views to this post, it is of great interest.

Hi Parmin, I´m not fluent in German, but for the part in english I understood, thanks up to now. For the part I understood, your links suggestion I think can help someones, as an initial idea. I had seen some like that before, and as explained, they do no work as HDDs stop to spindle. Also, I tried something else to make a permanent spindle with no success up to now.

Thanks all of you that helped up to now, but by the interest at the topic, I suggest we shoud continue with it. So, if you can contribute, it will continue to help a lot, and will be a very unique topic at internet..
PetroAguia

Posted on: December 19, 2013, 02:08:08 14:08 - Automerged
on these links we can see how complex is to try to develop a driver for HDD motors, without a CI, or even with them.
http://www.classiccmp.org/rtellason/chipdata/tda5146.pdf
http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/msp/papers/1998/bwhite.pdf

[pickit2]

236 views in not a great number, also BLDC are as parmin has said "they are so common" if you haven't found your answer with google your asking the wrong questions.
my first page of my search shows this... strange my pc has pcbheaven.com bookmarked
http://www.pcbheaven.com/wikipages/How_Brushless_Motors_Work/

[CocaCola]

on these links we can see how complex is to try to develop a driver for HDD motors, without a CI, or even with them.
http://www.classiccmp.org/rtellason/chipdata/tda5146.pdf
http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/msp/papers/1998/bwhite.pdf

I'm not sure what you are not seeing or what you believe you are seeing in those links, it's simply not as complex as you continue to make it out to be or believe it to be, honestly it's not...

What I see is that you really don't understand the principles involved (and probably half of the documentation you linked) and with the little that you believe you do understand you are using that to formulate false conclusions and imagine it to harder than it really is, simply because you don't understand it...  If you continue to do your research and get a better understanding of the basics your conclusions are likely to change...  Google is your friend...

May I suggest you take this quote to heart...

"...a little knowledge is apt to puff up, and make men giddy, but a greater share of it will set them right, and bring them to low and humble thoughts of themselves."

[one]

The first action should be to download the driver's datasheet.
Then, cut the wires going to the driver's control (enable, speed input, sense, etc.) and hook them to an external controller or to some fixed voltages.

Look on one of your boards and give as the name of the motor driver.

[CocaCola]

The first action should be to download the driver's datasheet.
Then, cut the wires going to the driver's control (enable, speed input, sense, etc.) and hook them to an external controller or to some fixed voltages.

Look on one of your boards and give as the name of the motor driver.

Most hard drives nowadays use custom proprietary chip sets (or house re-numbered) that will be nearly impossible to find information on in most cases...  Its far easier and cost effective to simply build a new driver, that is unless you have unlimited time to waste...

[petroaguia]

well, here are some really interesting links on the subject. Not yet a way to use the driver that comes into the HDD. But I´m still trying on the little spare time I have (I must share it with other stufs).
http://www.instructables.com/id/BLDC-Motor-Control-with-Arduino-salvaged-HD-motor/all/
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/l293d.pdf
http://www.st.com/st-web-ui/static/active/cn/resource/technical/document/application_note/CD00003776.pdf
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/appnotes/00885a.pdf