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Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

motorsformakers.com

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Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#21

Post by abakker »

rq1 wrote: post #20

Does anybody have an address where to shop servos and gearboxes online? Or at least find references through filtering for specific torque/rpm/power/driver resolution... etc.? I hardly can find something worth looking at outside of ebay. A lot of websites don't have public price lists but ask you to fill forms and receive quotes, but I don't want to order thousands of these (yet?)...

If you are doing servos and not well versed in these things, I highly recommend clearpath servos from teknic. The wiring is easy and their tuning support is very good (if the auto tune doesn’t work). If you need more power, or AC servos, I suggest DMM Dyn4 drives and servos.

Finally, if you need gearboxes, stepper online has good ones that have held up well for me.

Source: have built/converted several CNCs.

Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#22

Post by abakker »

sugarkjube wrote: post #14
sugarkjube wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here’s hoping none of us need to make money through writing… i'd assume pretty soon hardly anybody can still make money through writing as it's easy to ask chatgpt "write me a book titled Motors for makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines". or maybe i lack vision, maybe soon chatgpt can answer "should i use a stepper or a servo for my robot arm", or "how do i wire up stepper xyz on CNC ma…

seems i lack vision. should i use a stepper or a servo for the robot arm i'm designing ? Stepper motors are best for precise, open-loop control applications where position and speed can be accurately controlled. They are also a good choice for low-speed, high-torque applications. However, they tend to be less efficient than servo motors and can generate more heat. Servo motors are best for closed-loop control applica…

This advice is not good.

Robot arms should use harmonic drive gearboxes and servos, IMO. In practice, if the loads are not massively high, the important thing is closed loop steppers or servos, with accurate homing routines and good error handling.

Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#23

Post by cpach »

mbustamanter wrote: post #10
boredemployee wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man back in my college days (2006-2012), it was a pain in the ass to have books (materials science) and find stuff online. anyway, i was known as "the king of pdfs". because i always knew how to search things. but now the game is in a whole another level and my fame would fall into oblivion!

My trick was searching +"index of" on Google or something like that, I could find all sorts of books that way. What were your tricks?

filetype:pdf

These days, Libgen is much more convenient.

With that said, I personally prefer buying an official book if available, so that the author can get their royalties. Many publishers even offer DRM-free ebooks.

Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#24

Post by slicktux »

rq1 wrote: post #20

Does anybody have an address where to shop servos and gearboxes online? Or at least find references through filtering for specific torque/rpm/power/driver resolution... etc.? I hardly can find something worth looking at outside of ebay. A lot of websites don't have public price lists but ask you to fill forms and receive quotes, but I don't want to order thousands of these (yet?)...

Try servocity…

Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#25

Post by diydsp »

rq1 wrote: post #20

Does anybody have an address where to shop servos and gearboxes online? Or at least find references through filtering for specific torque/rpm/power/driver resolution... etc.? I hardly can find something worth looking at outside of ebay. A lot of websites don't have public price lists but ask you to fill forms and receive quotes, but I don't want to order thousands of these (yet?)...

https://www.omc-stepperonline.com/

https://www.pololu.com/

Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#26

Post by philote »

pitched wrote: post #5

The second Google result for this book is a chapter preview from the publisher: https://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780134032832/samplep... The first result is entire PDF though. I remember back in the old days being a poor student trying to save money spending hours trying to find scans of texts (or making scans in the library). Now it’s the first result in Google! Here’s hoping none of us need to make money thr…

The PDF version is directly downloadable via the original site posted (http://www.motorsformakers.com/downloads/mfm.zip). They're making money by selling a print version.

Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#27

Post by WJW »

One of my projects for this year will be getting a slightly bigger AC motor (say a 0.5-1 HP asynchronous motor) and integrating that into a more well-finished project. I have a decent grasp of the software parts and have done some projects with servos and steppers, but using bigger motors has eluded me so far.

Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#28

Post by diydsp »

abakker wrote: post #22
sugarkjube wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems i lack vision. should i use a stepper or a servo for the robot arm i'm designing ? Stepper motors are best for precise, open-loop control applications where position and speed can be accurately controlled. They are also a good choice for low-speed, high-torque applications. However, they tend to be less efficient than servo motors and can generate more heat. Servo motors are best for closed-loop control applica…

This advice is not good. Robot arms should use harmonic drive gearboxes and servos, IMO. In practice, if the loads are not massively high, the important thing is closed loop steppers or servos, with accurate homing routines and good error handling.

Agreed. It sounds like a junior engineer bs-ing an interview after reading lots of amateur forums.

Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#29

Post by krisoft »

rq1 wrote: post #20

Does anybody have an address where to shop servos and gearboxes online? Or at least find references through filtering for specific torque/rpm/power/driver resolution... etc.? I hardly can find something worth looking at outside of ebay. A lot of websites don't have public price lists but ask you to fill forms and receive quotes, but I don't want to order thousands of these (yet?)...

> Does anybody have an address where to shop servos and gearboxes online?

Depends on what kind you are looking for.

In the hobby sphere I know about Servocity, Hobbyking, Pololu, adafruit.

If I were looking for something bigger, more professional range I would check if maybe Farnell or RS Components have it.

Re: Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)

#30

Post by dragontamer »

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #11

For someone wanting to get into "making",is there a good set of starter resources like this? Software I'm comfortable with, but I'm not really familiar with all of the physical components or how to put them together, when you might use each, etc...

My issue with motors is that all of their problems seem mechanical in nature to me.

I don't think anyone will really have a problem wiring up an H-bridge or whatever to run a motor.

I'm personally wondering how to use the physical properties of a motor to like, move Magic The Gathering cards around, or other real world tasks.

It very quickly becomes a mechanical levers / pullies / motion kinda problem, rather than electrical. And I have no idea how to study mechanical engineering.

-------

Like: how does a damn printer pick up just one piece of paper? Yeah yeah, there is a motor involved, but it's not the hard or interesting part.

There has to be little rotating mechanical fingers, the shape of the basin, the winding path the paper takes internally. Who designed that? How do I study that stuff?

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