I'm just looking for a basic turntable with a power feed, either via a slip ring or inductive transfer, much like the RPLIDAR but without the actual sensor assembly. Ideally it would be direct drive as drive belts perish over time. The target speed is 2Hz.
I see slow turntables (without slip rings) designed for the 3d scanning of objects but not much else. Rotating LED signs etc. all seem to be custom hardware.
I haven't see one (although they probably exist). But when I had to do an application like this ~8 years ago, instead of slip rings, I used a fixed LIDAR unit (Sparkfun Lidar-Lite) but rotated a 45 degree mirror using a small stepper motor to do a circular scan.
Presumably the mirror needs to be closer than the minimum detection distance so it doesn't trigger on light reflected by dust particles that stick to the mirror surface, or is that not a problem in real use?
I can honestly say that that problem never occurred to me and as far as I know, it's never happened. Shipped the product years ago and never heard of issues. Although, due to the application, it has to be in a sealed tube (I used clear PVC pipe) so that may have helped.
Baloney! I had a commercial CNC soldering machine with belts for x,y, and z movements. Never had a belt problem in 15 years!
A Google search will show you that perished drive belts in consumer gear is extremly common.
When buying a ready-made product you as the consumer don't get to choose what material the drive belt is made from.
I guess the answer is to buy better products, now that you know the failure reason.
360 servo would probably be a good option.
If you don't actually need the full 360 then there are a lot of other options by way of DC or stepper motors.
You could also do it via gearing which is a common method to drive a turntable for scanning.
Bob.
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