Ideas for a Rube Goldberg Mechatronic Watt Meter

R Pankau

I'm starting out with 3 motors sitting in front of me, a regular DC (from an ink-jet printer feeder), a Unipolar stepper(from an old IBM typewriter) and a bipolar stepper (from the aforementioned printer). I'm actually guessing about the bipolar stepper but it has 4 leads so that's my assumption.

All motors already have a cog pulley (or gear) pressed on the shaft. Hopefully getting a belt to match will not be impossible.

Surely someone can point me in a direction for good relatively inexpensive mechanical parts like cog pulleys, belts etc... that I could never make myself.

This will be my first venture into the mechanical world and it will have to be "build design" as opposed to "design build"

Of course I plan to use the Prop ProtoBoard USB that I received at the Unofficial Expo yesterday. I think the Unioplar stepper will be easier to drive than the bipolar (never tried to do anything with the bipolar yet) and unfortunately the plain old DC motor appears to have a helical type pulley and of course the belt is long gone.

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SRLM

You may want to browse around smallparts.com. They might have something that you could use.

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Powered by enthusiasm

smbaker

Might also want to look into continuous rotation servos. They seem like they'd be a pretty easy device to interface and prototype with. I have one sitting here that I ordered with my very first prop, but as of yet have not actually come up with a suitable project to use it for (my original idea was to build some rube goldberg-ian clock, but I never got around to it).

ElectricAye

R Pankau said...
....

Surely someone can point me in a direction for good relatively inexpensive mechanical parts like cog pulleys, belts etc... that I could never make myself. ...

McMaster has some relatively inexpensive spur gears and racks, if you don't mind nylon:

www.mcmaster.com/#plastic-gear-racks/=74bfwk

They also sell belts, etc. but you have to search around for something that works but doesn't cost too much.

hope that helps,
Mark

hover1

Look at:

www.jameco.com Under Robotics section.

They have motors, pulleys, shaft couplers, belts, etc.

Hope this get through. Motel WiFi stinks.

R Pankau

thanks for all the good leads. I'll check into them.

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