My turbo grafx original cd player doesn't spin.

[guyjin]

There were so many moving parts in there that you had to lube it a bit. What did the instructions call for?
Drumroll Please.......
Vegetable Oil!!!!

wouldn't that attract bugs eventually?

[kid_rondeau]

Well, I suppose it could...but I honestly think there's so few openings where bugs could get into, that it's not a primary concern. Plus, hopefully the rotation of the gears would crush the bastards!!

[Necromancer]

There were so many moving parts in there that you had to lube it a bit. What did the instructions call for?
Drumroll Please.......
Vegetable Oil!!!!

wouldn't that attract bugs eventually?

Even worse, it'll turn rancid and stink horribly.

[kid_rondeau]

Well, after three or four years of use my engine kit never stank...I'm not talking about an abundance of oil here, just a light coating.

[kid_rondeau]

OK!! Breakthrough time!

Here's my situation:
I have 3 TG-CD units. Of these, one has a broken gear, and the other two work, but only intermittently.
I finally got off my ass and looked inside my two "working" units and noticed something quite interesting...
No broken gears! Everything looked fine!

Confused, I decided to follow Nat's original suggestion and lubricate the three drive gears and the leadscrew (the long, gold-colored, threaded rod which moves the laser assembly). But what to lube it with?

I mean, I learned my lesson with the red mystery grease....I think that's what broke my gear in the first place! Or at least, it made the plastic brittle enough to break all the teeth off.

And I would feel moderately confident with vegetable oil, but I wanted to be sure. I can get a new engine kit, no problem...but TG-CD players are a little harder to come by!

I ended up going with a graphite spray lubricant from Home Depot. It was called "TDL" for "The Dry Lubricant"...supposedly safe for plastics. If you've never seen it, it sprays on wet, and dries into a very slick grey powder.

I sprayed down the moving parts in both units, and hand turned them to both extremes of travel, to really work it in.

And now, they both work perfectly!

God damn! Nat was right again!!

In any case, I no longer believe the plastic in the gear is to blame. But also, since getting measurements of my broken gear requires harvesting another unit, I'm not going to bother unless someone has a "for parts only" TG-CD they want to give me or sell for a low enough price.

But yeah, two working TG-CD's! All's right with the world!

[ceti alpha]

But yeah, two working TG-CD's! All's right with the world!

  Gratz. Happy, happy, joy, joy!! 

[nat]

God damn! Nat was right again!!

I would never steer you guys wrong. Glad to hear you saved two more from the scrapheap.

[kid_rondeau]

Update:
Had a bit of a scare this morning...pressing Run didn't make the CD spin. But I reset my system and tried again, and it worked fine. But this isn't really good enough by my standards...I'd like it to be more robust than that.

I opened it back up, and upon inspecting the mechanics of the gear assembly, I think I may have overdone the graphite a little bit. To be fair though, it was my first time using it. Anyway, the really annoying thing I noticed was that the gears still felt a bit stiff to move.
I took some 70% rubbing alcohol (I would have used 100% but I don't know if that's readily available in the consumer market) and cleaned off everything, and let it dry. The simple act of cleaning the gears with it made them spin WAY better.

After a little bit of tweaking, it appears to be as good as new. I've got my fingers crossed, but I'd really like to be able to stop worrying about this! Rarrrrr!!!

[nat]

There's definitely a "sweet spot" when applying lubricant. I've never tried the graphite you speak of, so YMMV.

I always use either vegetable oil or clear machine oil for mechanical parts in electronics (disk drives, Turbo CD-ROMs, etc) and as long as dried up lubricant is the issue, it works 100%.

I've never had an instance of vegetable oil used this way becoming "rancid" or producing odors of any kind.

[Teddyboy]

Hi!

I'm new to the board, and I have been reading this tread to see what kind of conclusions you might come to. It appears that you have been able to revive your cd-rom unit which is great! There is one place that you could check for gears and shaft for the drive mechanisim. None of these cd-rom unit has anything special about them more then likely they are using standard off the shelf components for the drive assembly. One place that you might want to look at is http://www.sdp-si.com/ Stock Drive Products. They specialize in miniature components, and if you can figure out what kind of gear(s) etc. You might be able to find it there or ask the question.

I'm a Mechanical Designer, and I have used them in the past for work projects. I'm willing to bet they are stock gears. Take a look and see what you find! Just want to give another potential source for the community to utilize!   

Regards Everyone!

Efrain

Update:
Had a bit of a scare this morning...pressing Run didn't make the CD spin. But I reset my system and tried again, and it worked fine. But this isn't really good enough by my standards...I'd like it to be more robust than that.

I opened it back up, and upon inspecting the mechanics of the gear assembly, I think I may have overdone the graphite a little bit. The simple act of cleaning the gears with it made them spin WAY better.

[kid_rondeau]

Hey gents, update:
In July 2008 I got an NEC external CD-ROM drive for a computer on ebay, just to see if the inner workings could be harvested for a TG-CD.
Well, nearly two years later, I finally got off my lazy ass and checked.

No, the parts are not the same. It's different mechanics in there.

Just wanted to give you guys a little closure.

[blueraven]

There were so many moving parts in there that you had to lube it a bit. What did the instructions call for?
Drumroll Please.......
Vegetable Oil!!!!

wouldn't that attract bugs eventually?

Even worse, it'll turn rancid and stink horribly.

I agree use a silicone-based clear oil, for light machine parts. It will turn rancid.

[kid_rondeau]

You know,
I have no vested interest in the use of vegetable oil (despite having purchased stock in Wesson... :-")...but I think you guys are exaggerating the oil's capacity to rot...a thin coating of vegetable oil isn't any risk, and it's safe for plastics, hence its storage in plastic bottles.

Like I said, I'm not here to champion veggie oil...in fact, if anyone has a foolproof, inexpensive plastic lube, I'd totally use that instead.