I had a similar task for a client many years ago. I only had about 300 DVDs though. I did complete the job manually, after 2 weeks of burning on multiple machines. Part of the deal was I got to keep the original DVDs, which I sold individually in addition to getting paid by the customer and keeping a digital copy of the DVDs for myself.
...This sounds like a lot of piracy (considering the DVDs were things worth selling individually). You got paid to pirate content for the client, also pirated the content for yourself, and then sold the only legitimate copies of the content in question.
I went out of my way to find a slot-loading DVD drive. When the drive is mounted vertically, ejected discs will fall out and possibly roll away on their own. That just leave a hopper to hold the queued discs and one moving piece to reposition and insert the disc far enough for the drive loader to grab it.
My favorite game to play when working on hardware projects is "make it work (with what you have)".
It's way more fun than just going to the hardware store to get what you "need". Granted the end result is normally pretty ugly, but then again the end result is not why I play the game.
This is by far the biggest reason to own a 3d printer. Even if you don't have any motors and just the microcontrollers, printing custom cases for them beats using Altoid or soap boxes.
It can take a project from a "bunch of wires and solder" to "hey, this looks like something from a store"
The moving ramp is a brilliant solution that prevents needing any lateral motion of the arm. It makes using a pulley system for up/down much more reliable.
I remember this from many years ago. I seriously considered making one when I was ripping my cd collection to mp3z. Ultimately, I didn’t, but I still think an actually useful robot would be nice.
my first youtube video! Built one of these at school. Oddly, it wasn't for a project, it was because a professor needed 100 copies of a cd done for some reason or another, and paid me for it.
