I got a broken 40GB PS3 from ebay, which had problems playing any blu-ray discs, yet would work fine with DVDs and CDs. Typical laser problem.

After opening the BD-ROM to determine what kind to use (410A: twin laser), I put it back together only to find that it was no longer accepting any discs. In fact, the motor wasn't spinning at all. I figure since I tried cleaning the lens while I had it out that I probably knocked something out of place, and waited for the replacement assembly.

Assembly got here on the 13th. Same problem. Discs aren't spinning up.
This is either another bad unit, or there's something else going on.

I'm near convinced that the problem lies in the drive lid. The video shows that the two wings on the lid don't part or retract like they should, but I haven't found anything that would make them move properly.
Another post here suggested that there's a sensor in the new series drives.
I'd like to double check this while my supplier is checking with their supplier, I have a couple of days.

Video of problem: http://www.me262.net/PICT0002.AVI (14MB)
Pic 1: Outside of lid: http://www.me262.net/pict0003.jpg (2.3MB)
Pic 2: Inside of lid: http://www.me262.net/pict0004.jpg (2.2MB)
Pic 3: Exposed drive assembly: http://www.me262.net/pict0005.jpg (2.1MB)

1. Where is the sensor on this drive, if it exists?
2. What am I missing with putting the lid back on?

u r missing a spring.

if you have money, i recomend u to get a broken drive for parts
get this, it should fix ur problem, cuz it fixed mine
click here

Test the drive with the lid off. Lay the lid to the left, or unplug the disc sensor switch and remove lid completely. Turn on the PS3 and with each hand push each disc "wing" of the disc re-tractor in all the way and that will start the two tray lifters to start to slide (left side forward, right side backward). This lift the laser tray up to play a disc. You need to help the left lifter move forward all the way, slight help with your hand is all you need. When the tray is lifted the laser will attempt to read a disc and the blue laser flashes first, the the red laser flashes.

If there is resistance to manually moving the retractor arms, then the cogs could be out of place. The retactor can be removed by the 1 screw in the middle of it. Take photos as you got to help in re-assemble. Careful when you take this off as the cogs can fall to the floor or silde down into the front of the PS3.

If and when the re-tractor works, turn off the PS3 now and set a DVD on the spindle and put the white CD Clamp on the spindle. Turn on the PS3 and see if it spins and reads a disc. Next try a Blu Ray game or movie.

Funny, nothing fell out or came out of place... where would the spring go?

You mean something like this?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...N:IT&ih=003

Where is the sensor switch at?
Ah. If this is the thing on top lid, then it appears that I don't have one. In which case, there could be something with the cogs

I think I see what's going on actually. There's a black bar running along the right side of the assembly on a rail, which is connected to a tension spring and a switch lever. Pull the bar to the rear, the right side of the laser assembly lifts up, and the switch releases. The bar goes in, the switch is pushed in. Same on the left side, only this engages via the top section.
Currently the right section is the part I'm having trouble with, it seems the left does catch and raise that section of the laser.
This is proving to be a bitch to get back into place...

I managed to get the drive spinning, but I still have not been able to put on the top.

I'm letting the laser run a BD movie on repeat while I'll be out visiting for 5 hours, so far it hasn't given any problems, and I'm not expecting any at this point.

So, how exactly do I position this top lid so that it goes on clean, and I can slide a disc in there to get it working?

The sensor on the drive top is a small metal rectangle clip that trips the sensor it is attached to.

That can be tricky. The only thing that I have been doing is to set the drive to the elected disc state.

As in... remove the disc from the spindle, do not put the top on. Press eject and help the tray lifters stride in the opposite direction to tilt the tray down. Now lay the top down and position it in place, do not screw it down yet. Hold the top down with one hand and insert a disc. If it inserts all the way and spins up to speed and the menu register a game/move to play, then eject the disc and do it again. When you are confident that the drive is functioning, put the screws back.

If it is not start again form the top!

Yeah. Then that's not my configuration. My sensor is along the right slider that lifts the assembly.

I've been looking while it's playing comparing points, but I'm just not sure...

The laser survived the 8+ hour torture test (playing Chain Reaction on BD), so now I have to get the lid working, or run the PS3 with the lids off (given the heat that comes out of this that may not be a bad thing).

I also want to add that if I put the lid on when everything is in a "neutral" position, then I get a lot of resistance from the right slide bar. It partially lifts the lens, but it can't go far enough to free the sensor switch.
There is either some gear or lever on the back (picture 2, left side) that isn't giving enough push to the right slide bar on the assembly (picture 3, right side), or there's something else at work that I can't figure out.

If you need a picture of this setup, let me know and I'll get it in the morning. I've tried numerous positions with the lid and slide bars, to no avail.

I'm sort of in the same position, but my drive wont spin up.
I know it does because it has before, but I took it apart and when I put it back together again it stopped spinning up. It catches the disc with the cover on fine, I just can't get the thing to spin.
Is there a switch that does that that I'm missing?

me262 & darkzero

But, there are acctully 3 different senor switchs on the drive. I don't think you have any problem with the switches.

1. On the drive lid. It is optical. It is located at the front and has the red and black wires that run on the top of the lid to the left outer side of the drive and plug in there.

2. Sensor at the front right side under the two wings that is tripped by the the black sliding tray lifter.

3. Senors (2ea) that at also located under the two wings that are tripped by by the right wing as a disc is inserted.

The only time I had to replace a drive top is when a PS3 would eject any disc I put in it after about 60 seconds. I am not sure what caused it , but I had brought a working drive, without the control board for parts and changing the top fixed it. So I don't think you guys need a new top.

When ever I open a drive, I always remove the top, unplug the door sensor (#1) and then manually put the 2 wings outward to engage the tray lifter. Then I test the laser or replace the laser. When it is working, I turn off the PS3 and then remove the test disc and then turn on the PS3 again. I press the eject button to set the drive to the "no disc" position. This is the position that the lid is in when it is removed. There are spring loaded arms and trip devices in the lid that are naturally in the ejected or empty drive location. Put the lid down, and hold it in place by hand and turn put a disc in through the door.

If the disc is pulled in by the drive and the the drive attempts to spin it, but only turns for 1 or 2 seconds and then stops, try ejecting the disc. I f you cannot eject the disc take to top off and again return the tray to the empty or ejected disc position. Try again with the lid. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 times.

The slide bars have only 2 positions, tray up and tray down. The left side bar is moved a motor under the 2 wings, the right side bar is moved by the left side bar. There is an aluminum lever that you can see from the bottom drive when you remove the bottom metal shell. This lever has a pin on each side that is inserted into the left and right slide bar. The lever then forces the right slide bar forward or backward, keeping it in sync with the left slide bar. If you look at rear area of the each slide bar you will see about 3/4" of the track that this lever rides in. If you see the metal pin attached to the lever then it is not in the proper loation, it must be under each side bar so the they are in sync.

Also, the metal tray the laser and spindle motor reside in has two metal pins that stick into a hosing under the each slide bar. The slide bars then move the pins up or down to lift or lower the metal tray. I had a customer that dropped his PS3 and the force moved the pins on the left side out of position and the tray would not lower any more. If you tray is lowering and lifting, then they should be fine.

I hope this helps. To bad there are no tuts on this drive yet. I will check back later, I have to go to the shop, I am behind on dozens of 360's, PS3's, DS's, PS2's, and a Wii to fix!

I would check the right side slide bar,(picture 5).

If you are looking down at the drive, top off... the forward area of the drive is were the disc enters the drive, the rear area is the back of the drive. Look down at the rear area on the drive, just past the right side bar and see if there is a metal pin exposed there. If not check the same location on the left side bar.

It sounds like the pin or pins have slipped out of place under one of the side bars and that would keep the bar from going back far enough to release the slide bar senor.

Take a picture of this area if you have any questions.

Thanks for all the info.
As I'm looking at it, I do see the metal wing on the bottom of the drive is out of place on the right side. I had unscrewed that by mistake when I first opened the drive, and didn't think of it's position when I set it back in.

I'll be trying this route now.
Success! Everything works now.

Pictures of problem:
You'll notice the location on my server's been changed, I've put all the media into that folder, and the old links are softlinked (ln -s) to this new location.

Inside drive: looking at loose pin on the top right:
http://www.me262.net/ps3lidfix/PICT0006.JPG (2.3 MB)
on this picture I also popped off the loading mechanism to show where the switch is. (right side, front of the drive)

Bottom of drive: metal wing is not in right place:
http://www.me262.net/ps3lidfix/PICT0007.JPG (2.3 MB)

Video demo of fixed metal wing:
http://www.me262.net/ps3lidfix/PICT0008.AVI (26.8 MB)

Video of PS3 accepting and spinning the disc:
http://www.me262.net/ps3lidfix/PICT0009.AVI (18.7 MB)

Thanks for all your help jdbkbddy!

No Prob... Glad to hear your drive making that sweet wizzzzzzin again!

hey me262 congrats!
What did you do initially to get the disc to spin up? I can't figure it out for the life of me. It just accepts the disc, the laser shines on it and it stops.

In order to verify functionality I ran the thing without the lid. Putting the disc on the drive and putting the magnet over it.
My drive doesn't have an optical sensor at the top, so I don't know how to bypass it (maybe a white Lego taped to it?)
Be very careful with these steps, this has your laser assembly exposed!
Steps:

1. Pop out the loading gears in the front.
2. Take out the loading motor (unscrew the two screw that hold it down, but don't remove it completely).
3. Slide the left bar toward the front of the drive, and put back in the loading motor, locking the bar in place (be sure to screw the motor back in too).
4. Take a disc (preferably an audio CD that you have no particular attachment to (for me this was a nicked up Dave Matthews Band CD)), slide it through the loading gears so it's held securely in there by the back two gears.
5. Put the loading gears back on, while pushing the disc over the motor (it should be able to set in there nicely), and put the magnet over the disc. Be careful of the pilar that rose up when you slid the left bar into place.
6. Slide the right bar all the way to the back, and hold it in place (for my 8+ hour laser test I used a piece of tape, but for a quick test you should be able to just hold it with your finger).
7. Make sure those loading gears are not touching the disc, they should be out a little ways further.
8. Turn on the console. It should spin up and ID the disc.
9. From this point you can swap discs just by turning off the console, taking off the magnet, swap in a new disc, and re-power the console.

Hi guys my problem is that when i turn my system on, my drive makes a grinding sound, the blue light is on, and it acts like its trying to eject a disc, even though there is not on in there. How I go about fixing that problem? thanks i advance!!!

I tried the procedures to test functionality listed above but my disk still won't spin. Does this, more than likely, mean I need a new laser? When I power up the ps3 the laser assembly moves into place then the laser lens does a little dance, but no laser diode light and when the disk is in place it won't spin. When attempting the functionality test I have the front optical sensor unplugged. I was just wanting a little confirmation that this is consistent with a laser being shot. Any feedback is appreciated thanks.

dajonesta, I was having the same issue after I took my drive apart. Following jdkbuddy's suugestion of taking the retractor assembly off, plugging the drive in and getting the loading bars to track properly, seemed to work. My problem was that something was stuck with the left bar. But take the retractor assembly off first (the piece in the front with all those cosmo cogs and spacely sprockets beneath it)

thanks guys I finally got it working!!

Did you ever get this working? This is exactly what my 40gb KEM-400aaa is doing right now. I'm not sure how to test the drive motor but everything happens the very same way you are describing. There is a sound like its trying to spin, maybe 4 soft low-volume clicks and then it stops. This does not turn the disc but if you put your finger on the spindle with the disc in there, at the time the system makes the clicks sound you can feel something on the spindle. I will replace the laser or the motor if I knew that was the problem, but I just don't know.

does the disk spin freely by hand? reason i ask is i bought a red light ps3, fixed that only to find that it wouldnt play any disks. i then started reading this thread and playing around with the drive. i first tried helping the disk to spin during init and it didnt help, i also noticed that the disk didnt spin freely, it seemed to have some drag on the disk. i then realligned the spindle hub a bit and it started playing red laser disks but no blu rays. i realligned it a bit more and it began working for all blu rays and red laser disks.

Yes in my case the disc does spin freely when inserted. I tried inserting a clear disc (like one in the top of a spindle of discs) and this way i could see what the lens was doing. The lens actually moves in towards the inside of the disc and then pushes up a few times. This is the sound I was hearing and the feeling i felt when touching the disc. There is no attempt to spin however.

I would just buy the laser if i had a good feeling that was the prob, but I really don't yet. I do now know that the laser does not light up at any point at all. I thought the way this worked was that the disc would spin up, the laser would attempt to read (or not if it was a faulty laser), then either play the disc or not. Maybe i'm wrong though and the laser does some sort of check first before spinning up the disc....

if the laser diode is burnt out, the disk will not spin at all. this sounds like your problem, replace the laser and you should be good to go.

Ahh, that's the answer I was looking for! Except, one more question, does the bluray laser (i only have one laser since this is a kes-400aaa NOT 410aca) light up when you put the disc in to test BEFORE spinning the disc? This is what I attempted to verify using the clear disc and it moved around but did not light up even for a second...

I had to take a drive apart to clean it, and now I can't get the thing assembled right. Seems I'm having trouble with the piece that rolls the disc in (two white things, and they have the loose gray things that go over top, near the front of the drive). If I screw it down, and move the white plastic things, I can't move them all the way to the ends.

I found a semi-detailed site of pictures, but I really don't know where I'm going wrong on this.

Is there any kind of checklist or something I can go over to ensure I can set each piece *properly* back into place?

yo hotknife try to loosen that screw a little bit and then try to push in the gears by hand. that might help. try this site it helped me. realign bluray drive

I know this is an old post, I'm have the same issue, Its a 80gb PS3 with a newer 410A laser deck. I can't get it to spin the disc at all. I have tried all of the above and it won't spin still. I have the top cover off, all the loading gears pulled back, and the tray will ingage up and down without a problem, just won't spin the disc. Any suggestions? ( I also put a known good laser and laser deck in to see if that was the problem )

I also Have this problem sorry for revving an old thread. I have kes 410A

Similar problem here with a 40GB with KES-400A. PS3 froze up, got error 80010514 whenever I tried to run any games. DVDs worked for about a week, but now nothing works at all.

I opened it up so I could see what's going on. For the most part everything seems to work; the disk loads in the drive, the laser jumps and appears to be shining (faint blue light, I could grab a video if it would help). However the disk never spins at all.

Would this be a problem caused by the laser not working properly, or is there something else that would prevent the disk from spinning up? Appreciate any advice you might have.

This thread has the only pictures I can find of my drive. I do not have the sensor in the lid. I can get it to spin and read or eject but not both. How the hell do you get it all in sync. The link above is for the wrong drive.

I know this thread is old but just wanted to say thank you - I now got my drive working and the top of the bluray back on as well.

I have one of the newer bluray drives on the fat ps3 so all the youtube vids didn't really help. It seems in sony's attempt to reduce the cost of the ps3 they changed the design of how the tray mechanism works.

Anyway I had taken the drive apart to replace the lens and the rack. This was pretty simple to achieve - but when trying to put it back together again the disc would get pulled into the drive but wouldn't be positioned properly and wouldn't spin. After hours of trying I stumbled upon this thread. Thanks to the images provided I figured the metal arm at the back of the drive was out of position.

Once I placed that back in the drive still wouldn't spin the disk and there appeared to be resistance. The disc should spin freely once fully loaded even if the ps3 is off and you spin it manually.

I wish I had some images to provide as well but it turns out that the loading 'arms' at the front of the drive should not be in contact with the disc at all when it is fully loaded. Mine were still touching the disc and as the 'arms' have rubber contacts that spin it was preventing the disc from spinning. To make is clear, nothing should be in contact with the disc other than the middle spindle and the top magnet. It turns out that the left hand sliding rail is what holds the arm away from the disc. When it slides down the groves catch the arm and hold it back.

After playing around with it for a few hours more and reading tips on here and other sites on the net I finally got it working and reading the disc without the top of the drive on.

Getting the top on was very difficult but in the end I decided the best way to ensure every thing was lined up was to put the drive in the loaded position (easier without a disc) and line up the various components on the lid into the loaded position as well and place it back on top (this is very tricky - don't bother if you have large unsteady hands) and. Got this eventually then placed the magnet in place, switched on the ps3 then pressed the eject button and hoped that the drive would go back to the correct resting position. The eject mechanism worked and the drive went back to the resting position. I inserted a disc and the drive took it with no issues and spun it with no issues and now it works with both DVDs and Blurays

After putting it all back together again I realised I had forgotten to put the screws back on the loading motor. Not sure if I can face opening it up again after all that effort and the fact that it is currently working

Anyway hope this post proves useful for someone else even if it is a bit on the long side.

Me262,

Hey thanks for all the info and great pics! Very appreciated! but in the "Video demo of fixed metal wing:" or the 008 video, you said you've been having that problem. That's EXACTLY what i have now. Everything goes in...but it doesn't fully load. what did you do to fix that? I've found out that i think it is the left plastic slider than doesn't move all the way. but it's exactly the same as in that video!

You will notice that there is something like hole on each side. the metal wing must be placed in these and you will know you did it right if it doesn't move at all. If you still don't get it how to do it, I will post pics for you.