Question about a slight modification to the nasty hard drive spinner

[holtdoa]

After talking a local computer shop out of a "throw away" WD caviar drive, I'm sitting here with the bearing in my hand and have a much better idea of how this spinner will work than I did just looking at the pictures. I've got a question, is there any reason not to print an encoder wheel scaled so that it will attach to the large part that ends up spinning at the bottom of the HD bearing (the place where the web sites show attaching a shaft that has the encoder wheel on the end? I'm thinking I could build a housing suitable for mounting on the underside of my control panel, have the knob's shaft extend up through the CP, and mount the optical encoder pair to the assembly properly positioned to read the larger encoder wheel. This would increase the footprint of the control by a bit, but would make it a good bit shorter.

Thanks!

[shardian]

You would probably need a new encoder board - like one out of a trackball or something. I don't think those onboard mouse optics can effectively read an arcade style encoder wheel.

[Thenasty]

I had thought of that b-4, but you can make that encoder wheel and try it w/Oscar moude encoder. If you are gonna use the mouse guts, the wheel woun't fit in the slot, but maybe you can cut it and make it work (lot of work & trial/error).

Let us know what comes of it.

[holtdoa]

I was going to relocate the encoder parts anyway, so physically making the wheel fit shouldn't be an issue. I'll post my results and some links to pictures if it works out well. Thanks for the input!

[ark_ader]

That option is very difficult, in my cab I mounted the encoder wheel spoke from the mouse assembly right at the end, then superglued it.  Not all encoder spokes fit at the end. 

So I wanted a hard drive spinner with less height.  I cut the led and the reflector off the mouse circuit board and positioned it under the drive wheel using the cut out spokes on some transparency.  Wired it up to the mouse circuit tracks and after some trial and error it works fine.

Remember to add large washers to the underside before adding the spokes to improve rotation.  It works perfectly and it gives me plenty of ideas for other projects like a SW yoke and a mini 360 wheel.