(Un-Official) PS3 Laser Replacement Manual & Video

[blackngold75]

Mike,

First, thank you for the detailed guide. The laser on my 40G PS3 died, and I was ready to buy the parts and follow your instructions. I'm confident I could have repaired it. However, I decided to check out Sony's online support portal for the PS3 before ordering the parts. In the end, Sony charged me $99 - that covered them sending a shipping box to me and all shipping and repair costs. I had my PS3 back less than two weeks after I sent it away. I also now have a 90-day warranty. Although it sucks that the laser died in the first place, I thought this was not a bad deal for the repair.

[hazkarim]

i have a problem with my ps3 reading discs and i saw this but i did the stupid thing and opened the ps3 while there was a disc in. i need your help

[beebani]

I have the CECH-2001A, had it for maybe 3 years, and only maybe 3 months total playing time on it. It just recently started not reading ps3 games, takes them in, spins them, and then makes a clicking sound and that's it. It will play blue rays just fine. Sony was no help, and I don't have $100 plus to spend on it right now. Is it the laser, or something else?

[idlegamer]

I was getting ready to order a KEM-450AAA for my slim, but then i came across a KEM-460AAA. Its advertised as being for the slim. What's the difference?

[cormyee]

Hi all. New to forum. I have a CECHP01. I have had it for about 2 years. Played it 2 or 3 hours a week. Never had a problem with freezing. Went to turn ps3 on..had Black Ops inside..But no icon came up. Tried all the tricks to eject..no luck.. Took it apart to get disc out and reset tray. My ps3 will not pull a disc in or eject. When i try to put a disc in the blue light comes on but will not try to pull disc in. The disc will not spin. I see the laser pulse up and down once or twice but thats all it does. It will not move up or down on its tracks. I did move the tray to the correct up position. I see the load clock in the corner spin for awhile then it stops. Whenever i try to play a demo or downloaded game the screen goes blank and the system completly freezes. My picuters were intact as well as my movies. I tried resetting defaults and also i entire system restore with no luck.

So here are my questions

1. Is it my laser causing this problem. Will a new laser fix demos not playing?
2. If not the laser is it the blu ray drive board and if so how can i fix myself?
3. If not either then what do you think it is and how can i attempt to fix myself.

I shed a tear when it happened..lol

Thanks for your help.

[GP Legend]

My 160 GB fat PS3 (The one from the Uncharted bundle) won't read any disc. Not Bluray, DVD, or CD. Is this the lens that's the problem?

[MerrickG]

Originally Posted by GP Legend

My 160 GB fat PS3 (The one from the Uncharted bundle) won't read any disc. Not Bluray, DVD, or CD. Is this the lens that's the problem?

Thats very likely to be your problem.

[cormyee]

on the cechp01 the br drive board is a bmd-031. It has a 2 and A in circles. Which part has the key. There is no BGA on the board. I want to buy a new board and transfer this chip..thanks

[Marine Mike]

Originally Posted by blackngold75

Mike,

First, thank you for the detailed guide. The laser on my 40G PS3 died, and I was ready to buy the parts and follow your instructions. I'm confident I could have repaired it. However, I decided to check out Sony's online support portal for the PS3 before ordering the parts. In the end, Sony charged me $99 - that covered them sending a shipping box to me and all shipping and repair costs. I had my PS3 back less than two weeks after I sent it away. I also now have a 90-day warranty. Although it sucks that the laser died in the first place, I thought this was not a bad deal for the repair.

Yeah, thats not too bad money wise if you think about it, especially with the 90 day warranty in case the new laser is bad. However, I prefer doing it myself as I enjoy tearing electronics apart.

[sivart212]

Great information. I just want to confirm my discovery while troubleshooting my disc drive. The drive will not spin/read discs. the laser also doesn't emit anything. Will replacing the laser fix the no spinning issue? Or is that a different problem?

[jhillard]

Thanks for the instructions. I used them to replace the laser and deck on my 120GB slim PS3. Unfortunately, I am having the same problem. That is, after 5 -15 minutes, the drive stops working. This occurs with Blu-Rays or games. Everything else works fine on the PS3 (like watching NFL Sunday ticket).

Could I have missed something on the re-asssembly? Or is it that my replacement laser is bad? Should I just replace the whole Blu-Ray player instead?

Thanks again for the instructions!

[peronmls]

Thanks

[Richiemccaff]

I'm having the problem with the disc no reading,ejecting

I thought I'd open my ps3,and give it a clean as I was having ramdom online lag .once opened I took out the power supply,motherboard,fan and cleaned them.i also opened the drive and clean the gear,laser with a bita glass cleaner and cotton bud .after it was all clean I close it up and put a game in it took it but wasn't reading so I open her back up made sure the cored from drive and power was connected as it kept coming out that was fine so I opened the drive again and saw that my game was still in there so I took it out mess about with the gear,arms then closed it plugged it in and it wouldn't take the disc so did a bita googling and restarted my gears closed it up it took the disc but wasn't lookin again so opened it put the power on and saw that the disc was goin in but sittin out of place and sittin on top of the spinning wheel so messed with the arms and tryed it again the disc sat in place and was as spinning so closed it all up hooked it up to the tv and there was mw3 auto starting .im a happy boy left it in a lobby for 20 min then entered a game ,it entered me in to a game that was just ending when the game ended my ps3 crashed so I restart it and guess its not loading again so I then tool it apart again messed about with the arms tryed it again it's not takin the disc so I open it again and wen I pulled the wire connected to the motherboard and the drive it pulled the socket right out the motherboard so I gave up lol .im now lookin to solder the socket back in place and try again if any one could help with the layout of the gears,arms,wheels of the Kem-410cca drive I'd be happy as I'm sure this is my problem pic would be nice thanks so for the bad english

[David_S_HUN]

Hi!

Since my CECHH04 PS3 model stopped to read any kind of discs, I replaced the laser lens (KES410A). After that the PS3 reads every kind of discs, except BD discs (incl. games and movies). Why can it be? Did I make a mistake during the replace, or I missed something? Have you ever had this problem?

Thank you in advance.

[cyrus9586]

Found this topic and i need some help.
I replaced the laser as ive done before several times on 80gbs but never on a 60 gb. I got a new laser opened it up as always replaced the laser nothing new but now when i put in a disc i hear a rattling and if i try to eject the disc it wont come out. It doesnt read the disc either. I swapped the old one back in and it still does the same thing. I tried resetting the gears but nothing was locked up. I think im over looking something but i cant figure it out.

Problems that lead me to replace the laser was the standard it read ps1/2 games no blu rays at all. As I said ive done this before and never had this issue but it was on the 80gb and i think either something different needed to be done or I did something i dont realize and need to fix it.

[TurboTurba]

Just stumbled across this awesome thread, and I'm honored to post exactly a year after the last post.

I need your help in diagnosing what is wrong with my PS3 Bluray drive. A couple of weeks ago my fan starting going really loud during playback and midway through a movie the screen would freeze, the time would skip 10-15 seconds ahead, display another still image, skip in time again, and then just a black screen. The BD would take much longer to eject and sometimes the XMB would display a spinning icon.

I initially thought that my PS3 was overheating and that this was a side effect. So I popped it open, applied Arctic MX-4, and turned it back on. This time the Bluray seemed to freeze the PS3 as the remote was unresponsive and so I manually shut it down. I then plopped in a DVD and it played for an hour. So, I decided to put in a Bluray Lens cleaning Disk (Memorex DVD) and it played ok and displayed that the cleaning was complete. I tried the BD again and this time I got about 5 minutes of playback before it froze again.

Questions:

1. Will opening up the BD drive and cleaning with alcohol resolve the issue, or is the damage done?

2. I have an 80 GB PS3 (CECHE01 I believe) and I'm getting conflicting reports online of having either a KEM-400A or KES-410ACA laser. Can anyone confirm?

3. Would members recommend replacing just the laser, the laser with deck, or the whole drive?

4. Can I take the Bluray drive out of the PS3 and reassemble the PS3 and turn it on to watch videos on the HDD?

Thank you all for the help.

[BLUgrass]

GUYS! I HAVE A PROBLEM!

My 4 year old PS3 is being weird. Last night, I put in ABCs of Death and couldnt play it because the menu screen wouldn't show up on the main screen (after all the previews; it showed up on my other blunray player). I put in WWZ and it played fine.

Tonight, Cabin in the Woods wouldnt play; the movie icon showed up on the main PS3 screen but then it just went to a black screen. I had to eject it and unplug it 3 times because it would stay black screened and would shut down normally. I put in Blair Witch and it worked fine.

Both blus that wouldnt play have played fine previously