CD Player
This project started one day when I realized that CD players and welding
sparks don't mix. So instead of going out and buying a $50 CD player I
decided to build one for the garage cheap and easy. The whole project is
made from three existing p
arts
you can easily get for free and assemble in about an hour. The base is a
generic CD ROM from a computer, I chose one that had play, forward, and reverse
buttons so I could search through CD's to find individual songs. The
second part is the power supply out of computer box (XT style I think).
The third part is a set of generic computer speakers.
CAUTION: JUST CAUSE YOU THINK YOU CAN DO THIS, DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD!! PLEASE BE CAREFUL.
Operation is simple: Once powered up, press the eject button and install your CD. Close the door and wait for the CD to spin up. Then press play or use the forward/reverse buttons to scroll through the songs. The nice thing about this is that the sound is digital quality and is quite full, even loud enough to here over the welder or grinder when operating and since it can be made basically for free there's no big loss if it gets damaged in the hazardous garage environment.
From the
back you can see the power supply uses the original cord that plugs into the
wall and also uses the original connector that powers up the CD ROM. The
speakers have a standard headphone style connector on them which can plug into
the CD ROM headphone outlet on the front, but I wanted mine to look a little
cleaner so I spliced it into the digital output on the back. The only
thing left is the speaker power supply which comes from the supply box it sits
on. I chose speakers that are amplified internally to provide enough power
to hear them, because of this the speakers require power, so I spliced them into
the power supply input where it comes in from the wall (you could just plug it
into the wall as well but my way means only one switch can control the whole
thing). This can be seen as the black wire on the middle right. I also
mounted the power supply switch on the front of the unit for easier access (top
left corner of the supply box on the upper picture).
Viola, that's it. Now some older CD ROM's may not read burned CD's of some brands. For instance only burned CD's on Memorex brand blanks work in mine, but all original CD's work fine. Or course none of you have burned CD's I'm sure. I don't either, I was just testing for educational purposes.
This project is quite easy but you do have to be careful when building it since you are working with high voltage that can hurt/kill you, so be careful out there. Also, if you burn your house down trying this, don't come crying pal.
At right is the second version of the CD player. This one uses a newer CD Rom so that it reads all CD's burned or not. Still has a headphone jack and Play, Stop, and Forward buttons, no reverse....Oh well. Still not bad for less than $10.