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Motor advice

Hi all,

I am getting into robotics (been doing some basic PC interfacing and programming) and am going to start making some actual moving hardware. To start me off I a going to build something relatively simple. A friend has a video camera (about 1 kg) that mounts on the end of a home made crane and he would like to be able to pan and tilt the camera while it is out of reach on the end of the crane. I reckon I can make the mechanism and circuitry to do this (I was thinking of using PWM), but I do not know what motors to use. The speed needed for the camera will be about 0.05 metres/second, so not fast, but the movement needs to be smooth. I have narrowed it to these possibilities:

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(sorry about the tinyurls, original URLS were far too long). As the motors are a rather large part of wether this project is sucessful or not I thought it best to ask for advice. What motors would people with more experience than me recommend and why? My budget would *just about* stretch to £20 per motor, but the less they cost the better.

Also, how do I attach cogs etc. to the output shafts of motors/gearboxes? This has been puzzling me for quite a while and I can't quite figure it out. I read somewhere (after much googling) that epoxy resin was the thing to use, but this sounded a bit strange.

Many thanks Will.

Reply to
will
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Sorry about replying to my own post, but I have just noticed that it is impossible (or so it seems) to send a link to any product on the RS Supplies website because of their completely braindead session handling.

The motors I was looking at were in the 'Automation/Motors/Motor Controllers/General Purpose d.c. Motors' category of

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Will.

Reply to
will

The URLs didn't work.

Are you talking about servo's or DC motors? If you want servo's, HiTec makes some good ones that aren't too expensive, in a range of sizes and torques. These all come with a nice little output gear and some various fittings for it.

If you need a DC Motor, I'd go ahead and buy one with teh right gearbox built in. Building a gearbox by hand is nearly impossible unless you're an incredibly skilled technician with a lot of shop equipment handy.

To attach the drive shaft to a wheel, you can use an ordinary hardware coupler. See the book "Building Robot Drive Trains".

Reply to
Mark Haase

Yeah, sorry, talked to RS about it, apparently it is a 'security' measure. Hmmm.

Thanks, I am ordering it from Amazon.

Will.

Reply to
will

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