I'm a total rookie when it come to electronics. My trade is metal fabrication, machining and welding. I have a project I need a lot of help with. I watched a few youtube videos regarding Arduino and stepper motors. I think what I want to do is relatively easy for a seasoned Arduino person.
I would like to adapt the stepper motor worm gear drive shown below to a shop drill press. (mechanically very easy) It will control the feeding of the drill down through the work at a very slow and controlled rate. I would like to have 2 momentary switches to control the up and down direction, a potentiometer to control the feed rate and a LED digital readout showing the current feed rate.
I could run it with one of the old PCs sitting on the shelf, but a inexpensive 7" Android touchscreen tablet of some sort would be better.
Is this doable with the Arduino? If so can you point me to some resources to help me make this happen?
You talk about monetary switches to control up and down movement, will you not also need limit switches to stop when you have fully retracted or descended?
It sounds like really what you are building is still mainly a manually operated drill, is that right?
You would turn the pot up for a fast descent, press the descend button, turn the pot down just before the cutting starts, hit the retract button when the hole is drilled, the drill would stop when it hits the full retract limit switch.
You will have a very smooth descent during the cut but the actual rate may vary depending on how easy it is to set the pot.