I want to start a project where a door (hidden on the face of something), recesses, splits in the middle and folds away, the presents an LCD screen flush to the same cavity the door just made.
I think I would need at the very least 3 stepper motors and some craftsmanship.
can anyone point me in the right direction?
Sounds too complex and hard to get exactly right.
The way i would do it
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Have the access door come straight back (assuming you have a void/cavity it can recess into.) I would use a worm drive and a stepper motor for this (have a look at Meccano for all the bits for a project this size)
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Once the door had come back far enough (and again assuming the void is deep enough) - i would tilt it through 180 degrees (think of one of those rides at the shows - a long balance beam - on one end is the Door, on the other end is the LCD (sort of like a figure H) - when the door initially comes back the LCD on the other end of the H is also moving away from the access hole, once it is far enough back to clear the hole then you spin the beam on its axis so the LCD is now at the hole and reverse the first operation so the LCD is pushed into the access hole.
This would require one stepper motor to push the beam into and out of the hole and a 2nd one to do the rotation - sparkfun make a couple of nice small stepper motors (i use one for my automated chicken door) and also a stepper driver board.
Craig
craigcurtin:
Sounds too complex and hard to get exactly right.
The way i would do it
-
Have the access door come straight back (assuming you have a void/cavity it can recess into.) I would use a worm drive and a stepper motor for this (have a look at Meccano for all the bits for a project this size)
-
Once the door had come back far enough (and again assuming the void is deep enough) - i would tilt it through 180 degrees (think of one of those rides at the shows - a long balance beam - on one end is the Door, on the other end is the LCD (sort of like a figure H) - when the door initially comes back the LCD on the other end of the H is also moving away from the access hole, once it is far enough back to clear the hole then you spin the beam on its axis so the LCD is now at the hole and reverse the first operation so the LCD is pushed into the access hole.
This would require one stepper motor to push the beam into and out of the hole and a 2nd one to do the rotation - sparkfun make a couple of nice small stepper motors (i use one for my automated chicken door) and also a stepper driver board.
Craig
Thanks for the reply Craig, what do you think about using DC motors with end-stop switches?
You could try but i think you would lose the precision of movement you are looking for
Assuming we are not talking something huge here i.e. the size of a 20x4 LCD ? then i would just use the Sparkfun Stepper motors - $15 each
It all depends on the depth of the cavity you have to play with - i would imagine without mocking something up you would need about 4 inches deep and about 8 inches high for my design.
Craig