DVD teardown - Toshiba TS-L462 CD-RW/DVD drive

DVD teardown – Toshiba TS-L462 CD-RW/DVD drive

Toshiba TS-L462 CD-RW/DVD drive ready to be disassembled

Toshiba TS-L462 CD-RW/DVD drive ready to be disassembled

{adinserter Internal_left}I’ve been using old computer parts for ages now, have steppers removed from 5.25″ floppy drives that should belong in a museum at this point. But more recently I’ve started digging into DVD drives, more specifically, the burning kind, DVD-R/RW, for laser diodes, as evidenced by my other posts here. All with an eye on cutting stuff with them on a CNC rig. So, in my search for a perfect laser diode donor drive I’ve opened some 10+ types of drives and I am documenting the teardowns just in case I need to look at the parts and know where they came from. I though it may also me useful to post the pictures for other people to see. If you’re looking for a high-power red laser diode and have a Toshiba TS-L462 drive in front of you, I hope this post will save you a little bit of time because …

if you read it, you’ll know that there isn’t a high-power red laser diode in this particular drive! So, you can save 10+ minutes and use that time to find a drive that actually has one 🙂 Still, there is some other interesting stuff in there, so check out the pictures and more comments. And post your if you have them, too.

Toshiba-TS-L462 bottom view, cover removed.

Toshiba-TS-L462 bottom view, cover removed.

Most of me teardowns so far are laptop drives. One of the reasons I disassemble so many laptop drives is because they are very cheap and plentiful on eBay in the broken, for parts, section. I guess they do get more abuse and break more often. That’s just my guess. in any case, they are not only cheap themselves but they are also not that expensive to ship, so it looks like a win/win.
Laptop parts are rather tiny though, and it makes it rather difficult to deal with them for DIY projects purposes but if you are not deterred, you’ll find all the same parts you’ll usually find in a desktop drive, sans the small DC motor that drives the CD tray – laptops usually don’t have one. Well, they do sometimes have slot loading DC motor, even tinier ones.
Useful parts removed from a Toshiba-TS-L462

Useful parts removed from a Toshiba-TS-L462


So, here is a list of parts that could be found in this particular drive:

  1. A small bipolar stepper motor directly coupled to a worm screw. The worm screw has a 2mm lead as opposed to 3mm lead common in desktop drives. So, if this drive is also wound for 20 steps per revolution (note to self to check on that), it may provide 1.5 times better resolution than a worm drive harvested from a desktop DVD drive
  2. All the corresponding linear rail hardware with springed teeth engaged into the worm drive. The rails provide the usual 1.5″ range of movement, pretty much as in any drive based on 120mm CD form factor
  3. No high power red laser diode but a relatively high powered (100mW optical output or just about) near-infrared 760nm laser diode. It may not be very useful for a CNC cutter project due to lower power but can easily burn and scar someone’s retina, so it’s not to be messed with, at least not until all the safety precautions are taken.
  4. There is the usual three-phase brushless DC spindle motor but it’s rather difficult to remove properly – its bracket also holds one of the linear rails in place. A design flaw from our DIY parts treasure hunt perspective. I guess something can be done about it – a small metal bracket of sorts installed in place.
  5. A solenoid with less than 1mm movement that used to unlock the CD tray so it can spring out of the laptop’s case. it’s usually on the same flexible ribbon cable with a tiny-tiny green LED and a membrane pushbutton. I don’t know why I list these. Well, if you’re into designing very small stuff, you may be able to use those
  6. There are 3.3V and 1.8V voltage regulators on the PCB, usually of the 1117 family
  7. There is a handful of other components, mostly ribbon cable connectors and tiny limit switches that can be desoldered with extreme care.
  8. Should I also mention that a laptop drive also has a good amount of sheet aluminum and some mild steel in it, useful for custom brackets, cases and such?

So, anyways, that’s it for this drive. There was nothing special about it, I just had photos handy. But if you were looking at Toshiba TS-L462 as a donor drive for a CNC cutter project, I would give it a 3 out of 5.

3 Responses to “DVD teardown – Toshiba TS-L462 CD-RW/DVD drive”

  • lion:

    hey, ok i have a big problem with my computer toshiba Satellite notebook ok here is the problem, when i put the DVD-R black disk (why) because i wanna put a program in the new disk but the computer doesnt reconized the blank disk a couple days i open my pc and i sawa something whrong you know the little box where i put the disk i saw this
    CD-RW/DVD DRIVE TS-L462 i think maybe thats why i cannot burn stuffs in the new disk can you tell me what i have to do to fix this problem…

    • Hi Lion, thanks for stopping by. I’m most certainly not an expert on fixing DVD drives.
      You see, by the time I get my hands on one of those DVD drives, they are already guaranteed dead. And then I make them even more dead by tearing them down and taking the parts I need – the laser, the stepper motor and the spindle motor. I’m still looking for applications for other parts that can be found in a DVD drive but in any case, when I’m done with the drive, it’s usually in a form of a small pile of plastic, aluminum, PCB and small screws.

      That said, you will have no luck recording a DVD-R on a TS-462 drive – it’s not a DVD burner, it’s a CD burner. You’ll have to get some CD-R blanks and try on those instead.

      Cheers!

  • EschatologicalEngineer:

    Thank you for taking the time to document this. If there was someway to consolidate an archive for circuit scavenging, component hunting, tear-down junkies like us, I believe it would be such an incredible resource for locating parts. If only manufacturer’s still provided schematics…

    Our modern day ‘consumer electronics’ fill dumpsters everywhere in the USA, with our apathy towards electronic waste. Army Surplus electronics used to reign supreme for budget hardware hackers, but now they are a thing of the past. Second Hand / Broken Consumer electronics are a valuable resource to us. Reversing the engineering and design process lets unfold a story written in pcb footprints, components, board layout, etc. The design tells stories of trial and error, of quick fixes and even of faults that led to the final demise of the device.

    Seeing how much care and detail you put into this site and the documentation of tear-downs like this, makes me appreciate the fine art of repurposing scavenged components and parts. Thank you for your contribution. I hope to see someday soon, a resource for the online community, that we can contribute our Tear-Down Bill Of Materials as well search through those submitted by others. Until then, Bloggers like you (I call this a blog with all due respect) will remain the source for such information.

Leave a Reply

Or use the Forums ! If your comment is a question, please consider posting it to a matching section of our Electronics Forums. The forums allow for a more natural conversation flow, especially if multiple replies are required. Additionally, you'll be able to style your writing (bold font, italics etc.) and post images which can help with a good answer.

Latest Forum Topics 
Related Posts
Tools

Coming soon ...