Just had a wild thought: has anyone successfully used cordless power tool motors for robot drive trains ? Such as cordless circular saw ? Pros (cheap; off the shelf; ) ? Cons ? ( high current draw ? gear casing in body itself ? )
At $50 each for a brand new one, the price seems right. But I am sure there are other considerations required to make it work in actuallity.
Any comments are welcome.
You could try this for starters:
ttyl,
--buddy
Cordless screwdrivers are used to tune Amateur radio mobile antennas. Commonly called "Screwdriver Antennas"
Bill K7NOM
--This group has a class that describes how to do it:
--Oh, forgot to mention; screw $50.- you should be able to get them from H-F for less than ten bucks when they have a sale on..
Ditto. I tried taking one apart, and the whole thing is designed to be hacker-proof. (This was a Ryobi, I think.) Not only is the case really hard to open, but the clutch and chuck all seemed to be inseparable. I did manage to pull out the planetary gears, but thats not really useful for anything, just kind of fun to look at.
The page is a bit older (circa 1997), but this guy built a sumo using the motors from cordless screwdrivers:
They work great. I have a 4WD, 4 motor test vehichle using screwdriver motors. They ony cost $AU 9.00 which is probably $US 6.00. These have no chucks to remove. Here in Aus we have some robowars events where you can only use 12V drill motors and mechanical speed controllers to keep costs down. The website is
Hi Andrew
Did you get those from Tricky Dickie's (Dick Smith).
Where are you? I am near Wollongong NSW
| -]
Cheers
Dale
I'm in the Canberra.
Yeah they are the ones from Dickies. I tried the ones from Reject shop/Clints but they cost $2.00 more, they did have metal output were the dickies is plastic but I don't think it makes much difference.
It was a little tricky to mount the motors and wheels. In fact my wheels are a little off square.
At the moment my vehicle doesn't have a brain. I just drive it on RC to check different designs. It is in peices at the moment, adding rear suspension.
bye
I have used electric screwdrivers for robot motors, but not for the main drive train. However, they certainly have the power and the life span for such a thing.
Cheers!
Sir Charles W. Shults III, K. B. B. Xenotech Research
321-206-1840The cheaper ones tend to be more difficult to hack.
Where the more expensive ones have proper bearings, fasteners and metal gears, the cheap stuff tends to come with NO bearings, plastic gears and riveted fasteners.
Most of the chuck assemblies I have seen have a left hand threaded screw inside the chuck that helps secure the chuck to the shaft. You need to remove this screw first before you can unscrew the chuck from the shaft.
I've done a bit of work with some of these and generally pulled them from a Black & Decker cordless drills.
In one case I made several changes to the gearbox:
- replaced the shaft with a custom made piece that was better adapted to the sprocket I was using.
- reinforced the plastic housing with epoxy.
- turned the housing on a lathe to get it a bit more concentric.
The motors are mostly Johnsons' and they seem to easily tolerate overvoltage of 50% or more.
DOC
...
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.