On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:17:44 -0000, Arfa Daily wrote:

Automotive grease is too heavy for this job.
use instead a light synthetic oil [that] has excellent 'cling' properties
on both plastic and metal ... to lubricate laser slides and drives.

Arfa is right. I stand corrected.

The gears in the Panasonic portable DVD player are really small. The worm
shaft is metal but it's only about a mm or two mm in diameter and about
half a DVD diameter in length. The little tiny plastic toothed gear which
spins the worm gear is about 5 or 6mm in diameter and only a half mm or 1
mm in thickness, with correspondingly tiny plastic teeth which can't handle
much force.

If you put automotive grease on all that, it might gum up the works. I just
noticed Mike suggested a "light oil" as did Arfa so let's all suggest a
light oil of some sort that works with plastic and metal.

Maybe simple household 3-in-1 oil might be best.