Hi,
I'm a student and I'm kinda new to this so I'm lookin for some help. I'm building a machine that will take a shaft/motor (the motor is long and cylindrical) and need to rotate it up and down about a central point.
I was thinking that I could use some type of linear actuator to do this. I need this to move the motor up and down about 10 cm on average, but up to around 20 cm. It should also be able to handle and average weight of 3 lbs, but up to around 10 (although this point will probably never be reached).
I've found some things but not within my price range (up to $300) and was just wondering where I might be able to find new or used equipment to build this. Any help is greatly appreciated, and thank you in advance.

Colin Yoder

 

Visit the page http://www.alpharobotics.co.kr
You can contact me for more information.

V Bravo
[email protected]

 

Answer:

Make an elongated electromagnet with a center metalic bar serving as aguide and also as a nucleus.

You can control the movement in both senses.

Experiment my friend

Keep it simple.

 

Look at the following vendors. It will depend on what you need for accuracy & repeatability, speeds, and environment to choose what will work best for you.

1. Aerotech - That's Me!
2. Parker Daedal
3. Tol-O-Matic
4. Bishop-Wisecarver
5. THK
6. Thomson
7. Warner Linear
..... there are tons more I could list

If you post more about what your trying to do, I could help you narrow down your search.

Cameron Anderson
Aerotech, Inc - www.aerotech.com
St. Paul, MN

"Dedicated to the Science of Motion"

 

Cameron,
I think getting help narrowing the search would be very helpful. I've been able to find many sites/products, but am pretty confused as to how to sort through the stuff.
What I'm trying to accomplish is as follows. In a lab that I'm involved with we take wax models and put a silicon on top of them. to do this it's poured over the wax model, which is being rotated about it's center ( we'll say the x axis) to ensure even coating all the way around. But because the models arent perfect cyliners where there is a high point silicon flows down to the lowerpoints. This leaves the layer of silicon thicker in the troughs and thin on top.
So I'm supposed to build something to push the main motor up and down in the vertical direction ( more of z-axis positive and negative motion). The motor being moved is pretty much a straight cylinder. It's set up to rotate about a center point now, and we've been doing that by hand, but using a motor would be ideal.
It needs to handle the parameters I listed earlier, speed and accuracy isn't real critical. If it goes up 10 cm one time and 9.8 the next, then 10.2 etc... that's ok. Hope this explains the situation more, And thanks for all your help.

Colin

 

Thank you for the more details. What your looking for is a Z-Theta or ZT System. Z is your vertical axis, theta is your rotating axis.

Because of your price range, $300, I think using a pneumatic cylinder w/ a flow control valve is may be the only thing that is going to meet your budget or find some used parts. Do you have a compressed air source available?

If you do not have an air source, then you will probably need some more $. Have you tried eBay? There is a ton of stuff on there to use.

A lot will depend on the load weight for the object you want to lift up and down (your 3 - 10 lbs), how it will the load be supported, and how fast you want to move it (sounded slow).

Because you need a vertical motion, another concern is if power is removed, what will happen to the load? If duty cycle isn't that high, and speed isn't a huge concern (which it doesn't seem to be), then using a acme screw actuator may be a good choice. For motor, you could do DC motor to limit switches, stepper w/ control to do indexing and a stepper to rotate the system (but be ware that most people in a lab environment do not like steppers cause they do whine), or you could use brushless servo (but cost will be higher).

For your budget, not sure what to tell you.

-cam