Linear travel

Is that one inch in 1/10th of a second? What sort of load?

own to 100 ms.

ServoCity

BRW

If you don't have to control to intermediate positions, I think a solenoid is going to be your cheapest solution. Any motor that can do that speed will probably be expensive and require a controller. All you need for a solenoid is current. The solenoids are faster because they don't have to drive as much mass.

Surplus 12V solenoids with roughly 1" travel are $5 to $10US around here.

Mike Ross

When you ask questions like this, tell us what the load is. If you need to move 10gm, this is easy. If you need to move 10Kg, it's hard, although quite possible.

John Nagle

Modern tail rotor servos do 60 degrees in less than 100ms. For example, Futaba's S9256 is rated at 60ms. They're not cheap nor very strong, though.

The S9256 is rated at 47 oz*in. If you want a full inch travel, you'd need an arm length of one inch, giving you a max force of 47 oz, or

Since the servo has a rotating output, you will need some extra consideration to get the linear output perfectly linear.

OK I have seen some good answers here. My load is a small sliding lens, and I can't say exactly how massive it is. The 100 ms is what someone suggested but I think we can use a slower speed, maybe 250 ms. Still contemplating, solenoids are what we will probably use, with a pivot to get more travel. I would like to use two for push pull, so we don't have to use a spring. I just didn't know of good companies to explore linear actuators.

greg

Suggest investigating concept of "scale".

Ah, another vague actuator requirement. Try Google.

There are many different short-distance linear actuator devices available. If you're going to build stuff, you need to be aware of available parts. This isn't hard, because most vendors have on-line catalogs.

Questions to think about?

- How often is movement required? If you can allow cool-down time, you can use a much smaller solenoid at a low duty cycle.

- Does power consumption matter? If this thing has 120VAC available, power probably isn't going to be an issue. If it has to run on an AA battery, efficiency will have to be higher.

- How precise does the stopping point have to be? 5mm? 1mm? 0.01mm? Is a mechanical stop with a rubber bumper good enough, or is more precise positioning required?

- Is there a noise issue? If you slam a solenoid into a hard stop, there's going to be a click or a a bang. - What about size and cost? This is easier to do if you don't have to cram the actuator into a tight spot. And how many do you need?

- What's the life cycle? 100 operations? 100,000,000 operations?

A Festo SLTE actuator will probably do the job for you. They're not cheap, but they're a turn-key solution for linear motion.

We will construct it after the type of drive is selected.

Unfortunately Google does not always give what you want.

Thanks for the link. Most all of the actuators I have run into have way too much power for what we want. I am considerig a 300 rpm gear motor with a arm or circular drive feeding an arm. I can set direction and how long of a pulse I need to let the motor rest after its traveled.

The servo link was great. I might use a servo but its seems more complicated using pulses for control.

I am used to the old analog DC servos.

What I am doing is replacing a Nikon device doing the same thing, but much faster.

greg

greg

Not if you let someone else take care of the complication for you. You can buy a hobby servo controller that you can command via RS-232. For example, Pololu

BRW