Hmm..
Last night, I pulled apart two hard drives. One was tiny, from a laptop. The other was a 5.25 inch. I pulled everything out of the small one. (Careful if you try this, some platters are glass, and break into very sharp peices.) I left the spindle bearing in the base casting. I attached the head-arm bearing to the 'lid' of the drive (The peice made of thin metal. For this drive, I was able to cut it with shears).
I bolted the head arm & bearing to the stator magnet, and used the magnet to attach the whole thing to the spindle rotor. It definitely seems doable to make a tonearm this way. I would want to re-do it with a stronger peice of metal for the head arm, which forms the vertical bearing. It looks as though it would be easy to attach a tonearm and balance weight to it.
I also pulled apart the 5.25 inch drive. Everything is much more solid in this drive, and the bearings are much larger and better quality. For this drive, I'm going to saw the base in half to separate the head arm bearing from the rest. The drives tend to have 6 mounting holes in the base. I'll saw it so I just retain the 4 holes that support the spindle end of the drive, and they will become the mounting holes for the finished tonearm. The other two holes won't be used. Instead, I'll cut away most of the metal around the head arm bearing, leaving enough to drill some mounting holes to mount it on the spindle bearing. After removing the platters, there are 3 nicely positioned mounting holes I can use.
Based on what I've found so far, I would suggest using a 5.25 inch drive, rather than a laptop drive.
Last night, I pulled apart two hard drives. One was tiny, from a laptop. The other was a 5.25 inch. I pulled everything out of the small one. (Careful if you try this, some platters are glass, and break into very sharp peices.) I left the spindle bearing in the base casting. I attached the head-arm bearing to the 'lid' of the drive (The peice made of thin metal. For this drive, I was able to cut it with shears).
I bolted the head arm & bearing to the stator magnet, and used the magnet to attach the whole thing to the spindle rotor. It definitely seems doable to make a tonearm this way. I would want to re-do it with a stronger peice of metal for the head arm, which forms the vertical bearing. It looks as though it would be easy to attach a tonearm and balance weight to it.
I also pulled apart the 5.25 inch drive. Everything is much more solid in this drive, and the bearings are much larger and better quality. For this drive, I'm going to saw the base in half to separate the head arm bearing from the rest. The drives tend to have 6 mounting holes in the base. I'll saw it so I just retain the 4 holes that support the spindle end of the drive, and they will become the mounting holes for the finished tonearm. The other two holes won't be used. Instead, I'll cut away most of the metal around the head arm bearing, leaving enough to drill some mounting holes to mount it on the spindle bearing. After removing the platters, there are 3 nicely positioned mounting holes I can use.
Based on what I've found so far, I would suggest using a 5.25 inch drive, rather than a laptop drive.
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