This is a rock-tumbler style motor base I've been tinkering around with for the past few months. Getting the motor and driver sized right was a little tricky for an electronic illiterate like me, but this last version seems to work well with a 12v DC car seat motor and a 10A speed controller board. (More details through the link on the video page.)
The motor had a right angle lead screw attached to it that I wanted to drive the drum shaft. The drive was a weird mix of helical and worm, even the lead screw itself was a strange size, so I ended up hacking off the whole transfer case and using a chain drive. You can see the vestigial worm drive shaft sticking out past the chain sprocket.
Anyway, not sure how much the frequent reversing of the motor will hurt the driver or motor itself over time, but it's working well so far. Now that I have the drive ratio, torque, dB, and a nice broad range of available speeds worked out, I might try a programmable version of this to automate it a bit more. The motor specs list a 25A stall current, but only draws about 1.5A no load. I haven't hooked a multimeter up to it to check the current draw during the switch reversal (mine's MIA), but I'm only using it in the 30 RPM range at light loads. Those higher speeds in the video test were mostly to test the stability of the drum on the rollers. The thing can really fly, almost 120 RPM with a liter of solution at full speed! But I only dared to go halfway on this clip.
Anyway, it would be great if any of the electronically-inclined folks here could point out any potential problems with my setup or suggest a good compliment of motor controller/logic board for this motor. Also, how bad do you think I'm stressing the components switching directions so often?
Thanks in advance for any input.
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