Adjusting drawer travel in Pioneer DVR-118L

SSteve

[This is a long shot, but this forum has the most concentrated collection of knowledgeable people I know of so I'm giving it a try.]

I have a Primera Bravo SE disc duplicator/printer which has a Pioneer DVR-118L optical drive. Recently the disc picker has stopped being able to pick up discs from the open drawer. If I hold the drawer up and push it in about 2mm the duplicator can successfully pick the disc. It seems like the drawer is opening further than it used to which, in addition to being too far out for the picker, compounds the problem by making the drawer sag.

Does anyone know if there's a way to adjust the drawer travel on one of these drives?

LoopyByteloose

it seems to be a mechanical problem. These days, gears and slides tend to be plastic, which don't take as much wear as metal.

If you are brave enough and have a mind for the mechanical, I'd first look for a slipped gear on a shaft. It may have worked its way loose and require reattachment with epoxy or super glue. Alternatively, a stop on the slide drawer has moved, but that would imply that the gear that drives it can take the abuse of being driven hard up against it - not a really good engineering alternative. Another thing to check is whether there is an IR sensor for the drawer slide that had become dirty and is no longer causing it to stop at the proper location.

As you can see, I have to guess which kind of mechanics are involved as I don't have the device in front of me. But you are unlikely to find any documentation for repair or adjustment these days. You are pretty much on your own for a reverse engineering approach. The best I can suggest is that you take your time to fully understand the mechanism before you try anything. The firmware expects the mechanics to be within certain specs and if you work through a trial and error approach, you may never get it fixed. Think long and hard before you adjust anything.

SSteve

Thanks for the advice. Now that I've finished a large duplication project, I can remove the drive and take a close look. I had to replace the previous drive because it was having read errors. The new drive is only five months old. I hate the thought of just throwing it away and getting a new one.