Mechanical Components

The main mechanical components of an optical drive. First you will find three motors:
sled, which moves the optical pickup unit; spindle, which rotates the disc; and
tray, which opens and closes the tray.

The tray motor can be connected to the tray by a pulley or can be directly driven,
depending on the optical drive model. If the tray is not opening the first thing to
check is if the tray pulley is broken or not.

Optical Pickup Unit

The optical pickup unit can be adjusted thru trimpots located on its back. These
trimpots regulate the laser power. Sometimes you can fix an optical drive that isn’t
reading discs or is having a lot of reading errors by adjusting these trimpots.

The main lens. This lens is also known as objective lens and has two coils attached
to it. This set is installed between two magnets. So, depending on the current
direction applied to the coils the lens can move up or down, as the intensity of the
current will tell how much it will move. So these coils controls the lens focus.

There are two other coils called tracking coils that control the lateral movement of
the lens. Thru these coils the system can place the lens in the correct position.

Logic Board
On the logic board you will find all circuitry in charge of controlling the optical drive.

The controller doesn’t drive enough current to turn on or move the optical drive
motors. So all optical drives use a motor driver chip. This chip is a current
amplifier. It takes the commands sent from the controller to the motors and passes
them to the motors, but with a higher current. So, this chip is located between the
controller and the motors.

A damper for an optical disk drive connected between a frame and a base on which a
turntable is rotatably installed, for damping vibrations transmitted to the turntable. The
damper has a vertical absorption space for absorbing vertical vibration, a horizontal
absorption space for absorbing horizontal vibration, and a plurality of protrusions for
connecting the damper to the frame and the base. The damper is connected by inserting
the protrusions of the damper into connection openings of the frame and the base.

A sled apparatus for an optical head frame of an optical disk drive comprises a lead
screw, an elastic element and two opposing racks located on an upper side and a lower
side of the lead screw. The racks have respectively one end fixedly fastened to the optical
head frame and another end engaged with each other through the elastic element for the
two racks to clamp the lead gear and engage with screw threads of the lead gear such that
two ends of the lead screw subject to reduced pre-load force and friction force incurred to
the lead screw during rotation also decreases. As a result, rotation can be transmitted to
the lead screw smoothly and reliably to move the optical head frame rapidly and
smoothly.

a drive rail is attached to each side of the optical drive and then the drive is slide
into the slot.

An optical pickup unit includes a light source of semiconductor laser chips of different
light-emission wavelengths; a plurality of holograms placed between the light source and
an optical recording medium.

A flat cable device for an optical pickup head is provided, including a traverse
mechanism having a disc loader and an optical pickup unit, and a flexible printed circuit
or a flat cable. The disc loader is for holding a disc, and the optical pickup unit is for
reading and writing data to the disc. One end of the flat cable is connected to the optical
pickup unit, and the other is connected to a circuit board. By changing the placement
direction and the extending out location of the flat cable and connection with the optical
pickup head, the problem of interference between the flat cable and the traverse
mechanism is avoided and the traverse mechanism is enhanced.