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

motorsformakers.com

101–104 of 104 posts

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

#101
post #96
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those motors are just closed-loop steppers. I'd say they're inappropriate for robot arms because they can only apply their specified torque when the angle happens to be in proximity to a full step [0]. Proper AC servo motors like the A3 series from Delta are - as far as I understand - able to apply their specified torque with "infinite" resolution, in practice limited primarily by the encoder. In robotics though, BLD…

Thank you for your reply. Proper servos with high torque are quite expensive. I wanted to keep the project under a certain amount to scale it. With the springs to compensate the static loads (gravity) I can use weaker servos but I didn’t yet completed the “sensitivity table” of the generated angular momentums. Yes indeed, the ~10arcmin should represent something like 5mm at about 1m distance. Plus the ~30mm of the 1.…

The proper industrial stuff can be quite expensive for sure. IIRC I paid around $400 per motor in total. You might be able to get a better deal on used motors/drives though.

But steppers won't necessarily save you either, because that torque specification only applies to full steps.

Harmonic drives are great but unfortunately quite expensive.

What you might want to do is go cheap on most of the components and add a decent-ish encoder and use software to compensate for the imprecision. CUI's AMT series of encoders is widely available and comes with up to 14-bit resolution. I believe this can be a pain in the arse to get right but it sounds like you're comfortable with maths so it might work well for you.

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However I can't find them anywhere at hobbiest prices. Might put this higher up in your comment. Dynamixel robotics servos exist, but at Dynamixel prices. Weird stuff has weird prices. If anyone made a useful home robot that sold millions of units then robotics servos would get rapidly cheaper, but that hasn't happened yet.

iRobot has sold millions of Roombas. Wonder if there's been any economy of scale bleed-over from that work.

Roombas don't use any servos. Just a couple of regular brushed DC motors.

They do sell a blank chassis for classroom stuff: https://edu.irobot.com/what-we-offer/create3

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

#103
post #48

One problem I always run into with rotary motion: gearing. Finding gears of the right diameter, thickness, and thread pitch is always such a stumbling block for me. Most sites that sell gears to fit their motors have a small selection, and sites that sell gears are very hard to navigate (only to find out they don't sell in quantities <1,000 units). I end up having them laser cut out of HDPE online. Wish there was an…

I came here to say exactly the same thing. I'd love to find a kit or gearbox than can gear up/down a simple stepper motor for Arduino projects. The HDPE laser cut is a good idea though, I'll give that a try.

Inkscape has a plugin for gear teeth pitches. I no longer have the link to it (or the install because it was 13 years ago), but I was able to cut a whole bunch of HDPE gears. THe next hard part was getting hubs to match with them. :|

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

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was PRECISELY the problem that led me to get a 3D printer. I have successfully printed many gears using PETG for my projects. Now, they are physically bigger than metal gears for the same strength, but that hasn't been an issue in my applications. Using the wishbone-style gear teeth with 3D printing is remarkably sturdy. Of course the other way is: buy motors with (metal) gears that are close to your need - then…

> Of course the other way is: buy motors with (metal) gears that are close to your need - then you only need to 'transform' that motion a little bit. Buy overpowered motors close to your need, and 'transform' them by software.

This is only an acceptable option when speed, torque, weight, and volume aren't a concern.
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