Optimus CD-7200 Missing Lens

[Rebooted]

The title pretty much says it all. Someone gave me an Optimus CD-7200 Six-disc changer saying that it wouldn't read discs. I tried cleaning it with no luck and eventually took it apart for a visual inspection. Upon removing the pickup section, I realized that the lens was missing. I've checked everywhere inside the unit and have been unable to find it. Unfortunately, Google turned up that this isn't the first time this model has had this problem.

I'm fairly new to working on CD players like this one, but my question is can I pull a lens from a different CD player and glue it in place? How precise does the geometry have to be to make it work? If the lens is slightly larger/smaller will it fail? If it sits a hair higher or lower than the original lens will it have trouble focusing?

I'm hoping someone in the forum is a bit of an expert and save me hours of testing and just point me in the right direction. Thanks

 

[Lavane]

I pictured the lens hitting the spinning disk and getting flung into the chassis somewhere. Its tiny, so Iit could have gotten jammed under anything. Like a resistor, cable, wire, ect. But it could have wound up on the disc or tray and fell out after removing the disc. I have a CD-6000 that has worked great all these years. Hope you find it!

 

[Rebooted]

I was really hoping that it would at least be rattling around in the bottom somewhere, but no such luck

 

[Gjohnlue]

This the exact problem I was in when I opened mine. Although I DID have the lens. It fell out in my living room when I was looking over the unit. I got it out n the shop and opened it and found the same thing pictured. I was in shock! Just about this time my wife came in and asked if I know "what this little disk thing was?" And sure enough, it was the lens. It fits in the socket perfectly so I figured a tiny bit of glue about the edges and it basically would snap back in place and all would be right with the world. So I carefully put on a few spots of glue with a toothpick and put in it making sure nothing touched the lens on either side. NOTHING!!! So even with the original lens back in place it's still won't play a darn thing. Sad too since this even came with 4 extra magazine cartridges. And Radio Shack being out of business and the national parts warehouse being LONG gone, I hate to say this, but it looks like it's scrap. That is unless YOU found a place to get replacement CD assemblies or another option? Let me know!

 

[Rebooted]

From what I've learned since my original post, once the lens falls out, they're done. However, there are a lot of models out there that used the same reading assembly. Seems like the thing to do would be to get the nicest CD player you can and stock up on spares. Problem is, you'd have to open up a bunch of them to find the right ones. It'll be interesting to see what happens when CD players become "vintage".

 

[TWTRTECH]

That looks to be a Pioneer lens mechanism ass'y that reads and plays the disc upsidedown in their six disc changers. I have seen this many times at work, and nine out of ten times that I reset the lens and use the smallest touch of glue, the unit worked fine for me. Also a couple of times I had a hard time finding the lens, that is usually when I find it stuck to some grease point in the changer mech ass'y. this same mech is also used in some Denon and Nakamichi units.