A FIX: LG WH14NS and WH16NS (soldering required)

[artimusdeath]

First I want to say that I only recently found this forum and I was happy to see the wealth of knowledge that exists here wrt flashing firmware to the LG drives. THANK YOU ALL

Second - I had flashed my drives (both a WH14NS40 and a WH16NS60) so that I could backup my bluray collection, however the drives both made the same noises and would try to read 3 times and then the OS and MakeMKV would report I had no disc inserted.

Looking around the forum many of you have reported that these drives are not the best, but its what I had on hand, even though they were years old and i'd hardly used them.

I must have tried flashing dozens of times before giving up and figuring this must be a hardware failure of some kind. First I cleaned the lenses with alcohol (didnt work) then I disconnected/reconnected all the ribbons (didnt work) and looked for damage.. and I found the same problem on both drives: One of the wires that the optical eye assembly is suspended by was broken, same place on both drives.

Broke out my microscope and soldering iron and got to work:

Pictures of the Failure and my hacky fix are in this album - id love to post these inline but im not sure what image service to use these days

https://photos.app.goo.gl/KT3nym3hWxPZyXTY9

Ive ripped 5 BD's now with these drives and they seem to work well for now. Posting this for others who may not want to throw out those LG drives just yet

[MacTroy]

Made an account here just so I could thank you for this. My WH16NS40 in a Mercury Pro enclosure was dead today when I went to use it for the first time in a couple months. Lights blink, disk spins up a for a second or two, then stops; does that three times, then spits the disk out. I bought the drive new in 2018, and honestly have used it twice as much for CD ripping as I have for Blu-rays, but it's been well-cared-for, fast and reliable for all purposes...up until today.

In any case, I found your post here while researching what might be wrong, and sure enough, top right wire was snapped right at that same plastic wire guide on the laser head assembly of mine. I've got a different project all spread out on my actual workbench right now, so I brought the 15w iron up to the kitchen counter, stole an inch of ~24 gauge stranded from a surround speaker connection wire in the living room and stripped it to a pile of strands, grabbed my strongest readers and gave it a shot. It's not pretty, but it works like a charm again. Tested CD/DVD/BD, all are working great. Not pictured below is the little piece of tape I put over those ribbon contacts underneath the bodge to prevent any shorts. Thanks so much for the show-and-tell!

The breach:

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Kitchen counter fix-it shop:

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Fixed!

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[artimusdeath]

Ha! Awesome glad it helped someone out. Thanks for the pics and the reply

[mgbjr]

Wow my WG16NS60 recently started behaving exactly as you describe here and have been trying to figure out a replacement. I will take a look at this over the weekend and report back!

[MacTroy]

It's honestly crazy to me that the design of this is such that those six little wires, each barely thicker than a human hair, are not only providing the critical electrical connections to the lasers but seem to be providing all the structural support for the head as well. Not sure how they don't just break after the first couple hours of use, frankly.

One other thing I forgot to mention — when I first disassembled mine, I started by removing only the bottom plate, and then turned it on and ran a disc in there so I could watch what was happening. I saw both of the lasers fire off just fine each time it tried to spin up, so I'm guessing that this particular broken wire (topmost of the three on the side facing the ribbon cable) is part of the signal chain that's passing "read" info back, rather than, say, powering the laser(s) up.

[mgbjr]

Hard for me to get a meter on to check continuity without a third hand, but looks like the bottom wire of the three on the same side of the laser assembly as you guys is broken on my drive. Seems like a job for Ant Man, but I will give it a go!

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