On 03/02/2013 06:55 AM, Robert C. Campbell wrote:
My thought would be to count the pulses instead of a pot. I think we
will be stuck with gear motors if the goal is to go small and have
lots of torque.
Counting pulses will only be practical if there is a direct correlation
between pulse count and angular displacement. That means you are
pulsing a stepper and counting those pulses, or you are activating an
ordinary motor and the pulse train is coming back from some sort of
shaft encoder. But I prefer this approach (digital) to reading the
voltage on a pot (linear/analog). I am mentally working on a
straightforward, easy-to-build shaft-encoder. But how accurate do we
need to be, if we're building a system for small antennas with
reasonable wide beam-widths?
I am coming to the conclusion that for a globally ubiquitous supply of
second hand motors, we will have to turn to the automobile junk yard.
Windshield wiper motors and window wider motors spring instantly to
mind. Newer cars have motors everywhere. Repositioning seats,
adjusting rear view mirrors, opening and closing tailgates. Perhaps
central locking mechanisms can be adopted to lock the rotors in position
between moves to prevent weather-cocking. I'm fairly sure that
virtually anywhere in the world you could get your hands on two wiper
motors from a junk yard without breaking the bank.
I would like to move away from stops and find another way to establish
0~360az and 0~90/180ex indication so as to enable continuous rotation
to do continuous sky scan or search and rescue with out having to
wind up and damage my coax.
Continuous rotation probably requires some sort of coaxial slip-ring
system. Google "coax rotary joint." They look expensive, and I can't
help worrying about insertion loss. But perhaps limit switch is the
wrong word. But with a cam on your shaft and a micro-switch, you have
hard position-detection of two places on the circle: when the switch
goes ON and when the switch goes OFF. (In theory, enough switches and
cams and you could detect any number of places on the circle.) I think
it's useful, e3specially with a pulse counting system, to be able to
confirm your position at least a couple points around your circle. This
would allow your controller to calibrate itself when ever it needed to,
and possibly to double-check itself during normal operation. Whether or
not you choose to wire a hard-shutoff based on the output of these
switches depends on whether you have a continuous-rotation coax joint or
not.
I am not sure what battle ship radar uses for constant rotation but
that would be the ticket.
Bob Campbell
KB3PMR
--
73, de Gus 8P6SM
Barbados, the easternmost isle.
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