The Hard Disc Drive (HDD) project appears in three sections of this portfolio. Here is a summary of the project (repeated in all three sections):
For my senior project in mechanical engineering at CU, I was part of a five-member team that developed a systems-testing tool for the Research and Development area of Hewlett Packard (HP). HP received customer complaints about the noise levels of some of their computers. The cause of the noise was determined to be vibration from Hard Disc Drives (HDDs), which HP purchases from third parties. The solution to the problem is to develop damping techniques within the computers using test results from HDD vibration, however actual HDDs do not have a reliable vibration output. We were asked to build a tool to accurately simulate HDD vibration in a more repeatable manner to facilitate testing. This was accomplished by modifying four actual HDDs, which involved removing the discs and most other hardware from the interior of the HDD form factors, and replacing them with a fiber optic sensor to give live feedback of the motor speed. We took control of the motor with our own pulse width modulation circuit in order to adjust the frequency, and adjusted the amplitude of vibration by changing the mass and balancing of the motor itself with different combinations of screws.
HDD Circuits