Printer pilfer and steppers

[Panthro]

I had the idea that if I was to visit a suitable 2nd hand venue I could grab a few 'old' printers and pillage the stepper motors from them.

 

But this begs the question would I be able to use them with say a phidget?

 

Does anyone have any experience with this?

Or are servo motors the only way to go for gauges in DCS?

[agrasyuk]

Servos are possible, that is all i can say at the moment. i've seen this done, latest one by Gadroc here in this forum, but yet to look into details myself

[Seil]

You can use anything you want theoretically, just have to know how to program the controller to work with it.... I've used both with embedded controllers in the past.

 

Also may make more sense to use one type or the other depending on what the application is that the motor will be used for.

 

 

-Seil

[Gadroc]

I use steppers on several of my gauges. You just need the right kind of stepper drivers. Helios does support both Phidget boards but they are expensive. The uni-polar board is cheaper but it's slower than necessary for fast instruments like the altimeter or VVI. It works fine for the IAS.

 

You want a 400 step per revolution motor for nice smooth action on a gauge. Not sure what they use in printers, and it may vary.

[Mike Powell]

I think the majority of the stepping motors you'll find in a printer are of the "can-stack" variety having 24 or 48 steps. This is too coarse for nice pointer movement. You can gear them down for finer motion, or....

 

Something I haven't seen used much is the automotive gauge movement based on a stepping motor. They are produced in vast quantities and available for a few dollars each through ebay (Search for "speedometer stepper") These little guys have an integral reduction gear and move smoothly. The downsides are: 1) they are limited to 300 or so degrees IIRC 2) they have slightly odd stepping signals, so you'd have to code the driver for them 3) they are low torque so they're only useful for swinging pointers, not moving an ADI ball or a compass card.

 

I played with one a year ago and posted here: http://www.mikesflightdeck.com/oldnews/oldnews_2011.html scroll to the September 15, 2011 entry.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Mike Powell

[Panthro]

Planing on using Helios with the phidget interface.

 

yeah, thought I'd have to set up a reduction gearing so I will have to visit the

local RC shop to get a few different gears for R&D:prop:

[whartsell]

You can remove the stops on the auto gauge stepper motors. They are weak but can be directly driven by a microcontroller tgat can handle 20ma. there are a few arduino/avr libs for driving them.

[agrasyuk]

Hi whartsell!

Sorry i keep bothering you with that question but I was wondering how's it going with your software :) any update ?

[whartsell]

No worries. I have been out of town for RL for a while but will give you an update when I get back next week.

[Gremlin77]

you have to use either H-Bridge chip or darlington array. then you can move the stepper in any direction. I do it this way with arduino