instructables

Hard Drive Sander

by ThomasVDD

Many people have an old hard drive laying around. In this project we will put it to good use by turning it into a
powerful disk sander! It's a cheap and easy project, but it has already proven to be very useful when sharpening
tools and sanding though materials.

Let's get building!

https://youtu.be/jPIP9cthOrA

https://youtu.be/wuXoOF3thto

Hard Drive Sander: Page 1

Step 1: Parts & Tools

Parts

Old harddrive (although a new one would also work :p)

Electronic Speed Controller (about $4)
Servo tester (about $1.5)
Sandpaper
2 Banana terminals

Total cost: less than $10!

Tools

Torx screwdrivers
Soldering iron
Dremel / rotary tool
Drill
Multimeter

Hard Drive Sander: Page 2

Step 2: Disassembly

The first step of the build is disassembling the
harddrive. Simply remove all the screws; there will
probably be one under the sticker as well.
Next, we'll need to take out the guts. Undo all the
screws you see and remove the components.
You might have to use some force to remove the
magnets, but these are worth keeping!
Also remove the hard drives and spacers themselves,
since we'll have to restack them.
Small bonus project
These strong magnets are ideal to make a magnetic
parts tray. You can remove the protruding metal bits
with a pair of pliers. They will break off quite easily,
since they are quite brittle.
I had a lid of an old metal pen case, to which I
attached the magnets; et voila!

Hard Drive Sander: Page 3

Step 3: Wiring the Motor
The crucial step of this project is controlling the motor
of the harddrive.
The motor inside a harddrive is a brushless DC motor
(BLDC). They come in 2 variants: triangle and star
topology. For the full explanation, take a look at the
Wikipedia page, I will focus on the wiring.
A BLDC motor can easily be controlled by an
Electronic Speed Controller (ESC), and while we
could have made this ourselves, it's far easier and
cheaper to buy a speed controller. Furthermore, they
can easily be controlled by a servo tester; as the
case: just solder the 3 wires of the ESC (the blue
ones) to the 3 pins of the motor (a,b,c on the diagram)
and call it a day.
4 Pins
In case there are 4 pins on the motor, you have a star
topology. We will need to connect the ESC to points
a,b,c on the diagram. To do this, we have to identify
to which 3 of the 4 pins they correspond.
To achieve this, we'll have to bust out the multimeter
and measure the resistance between the pins. As we
can see on the picture, 3 combinations give a
resistance of 1 Ohm, while 3 others give 2 Ohms. 1
Ohm is the resistance of 1 coil (1 of the Z's on the
diagram), while the 2 Ohms is the resistance of 2
coils in series.
Conclusion: the combinations where we measured 2
Ohms are the ones we need (a,b,c on the diagram)!
Hard Drive Sander: Page 4
name implies, it is used to test servo motors.
However, the type of control signal for a ESC and a
servo are the same: it's a simple PWM signal. In case
of the servo, this corresponds to a motor position; for
the ESC it corresponds to a speed.
Let's focus on the wiring of the motor, depending on
your harddrive you will have 1 of 2 types:
3 Pins
If your motor has 3 pins, it's triangle topology: there is
a coil between every pair of pins. This is the easy
After soldering the ESC, mount it inside the hard
drive case where the reading head was. Every
harddrive is different, so try to find a way of attaching
it securely; I just some scraps of aluminium, although
glue would have also worked.
Attach 2 banana terminals to the red an black wires of
the ESC. Drill 2 holes in the enclosure to mount them.
You could also use a barrel jack if you want to use it
with a 12 V wall adapter instead of a bench
powersupply.
You can already connect the servo tester to the 3 pin
connector of the ESC, plug the banana jacks into 12
V and give the motor a try. That's the electronics
basically done!
Hard Drive Sander: Page 5
Step 4: Enclosure
Now that our motor spins, we can turn it into a
sander!
Start by taking a piece of sandpaper and cut out a
circle that fits your hard drive platter. Attach it to the
platter with double sided tape. This will allow us to
easily replace it in the future.
My harddrive had 2 platters with some spacers in
between. Put the spacers down first and then add the
2 platters on top of each other for extra strength.
Screw it tightly in place, this bracket will also keep the
sandpaper firmly in place (that's why we didn't glue
the sandpaper).
The last thing is to cover up and protect the ESC and
Hard Drive Sander: Page 6
to make it more usable. Therefore, we will reinstall
the original lid, with a cutout for the harddisk. Since
the cover is very hard and reasonably thick steel, it is
preferable to use a thin cutoff wheel on your rotary
tool. Wear some kind of face protection and a
breathing mask while doing this: it produces dust and
the cutoff wheel can easily break and fly away!
I also added an upright piece out of thin aluminium
that seals off the side and glued it in place.
As a last step, attach the servo tester to the 3 pin
connector of the ESC. I decided to leave it external,
since there was not enough place inside the
enclosure, and since it allows me to use it to test
actual servo's when I'm not sanding.
Step 5: Test & Enjoy

We're done! The only thing left to do is to test our new I hope you liked the project and have found a good
hard drive sander. use for that unused old hard drive!
Connect the servo tester and plug it into a 12 V
supply which can deliver about 1 A (see how I made Feel free to check out my other instructables:
one from an old ATX powersupply here, or a fancy https://www.instructables.com/member/ThomasVDD/
digital one here). Make sure the servo tester is in
manual mode and turn the knob, the sander should
start spinning!

https://youtu.be/STQVwwb0wsE

Hard Drive Sander: Page 7