Crazy Disco Floppy Disk Cleaning Machine

Back in January I started a project to create a device that would clean the mold from floppy disks. Sometimes their storage has led to this problem and as a result they can't be read properly anymore.Me being me, I wanted to create something that not only attempted to clean disks, but also did it in a fun and crazy way, so, I created an over-complicated machine do do such a job.It all started with spending a long time in Tinkercad modelling everything, and then finally assembling it all. After that was the fun task of programming the two Arduinos contained inside, and then adding lights and music!

This video details how the machine was designed and assembled. At the end of the assembly I didn't even know if I would be able to get the machine to work.

Shortly after this, I started working on the code. Due to the amount of I/O required, I ended up using two Arduino's to control it, and one Arduino was in charge of the other. This goes through some of the main parts of the code and how the two Arduino devices communicate with each other.

I took this crazy machine to the Amiga Kickstart 02 event in Nottingham in the UK where it put a smile on just about everyone's face. However, at this point, whilst being entertaining, I didn't actually know if it did what it claimed to do.

So I decided to put it to test against manually cleaning, and at this point I wondered if Isopropyl alcohol was really the best cleaning solution, so I decided to try using washing up liquid too. This was the result:

The results were really interesting. Firstly, and thankfully, it was good to see the machine actually worked, but where it really proved its self was with drying disks after they'd been cleaned. That really sped up the process.

Overall this was a fun (and crazy) project, and there's several things I learnt from it. For example, I'd never used servos before, and learnt a lot about their control.

I've not included schematics, code or 3D models as it's unlikely that anyone is going to build this, but if you are interested, please contact me.