I am a newcomer to Arduino, and after finishing the basic tutorials,
I wanted to try a project which is bit more challenging.
Essentially, I want to move a 1 meter long piece of wood (around 1-2 kilos),
in a 90 degree movement from upright to horizontal and back up again.
(a bit hard to explain, please look at the attatched sketch).
I would want to move it in regular intervals (for example once every 10 seconds).
How can I find the right motor for this kind of job?
How does one usually approximate the size of motor needed,
and what kind of voltage does it need to be powered with?
Find the torque and define the speed at which you need to move the object
I usually oversize a motor by at least 1.5X the required torque, you can also use gears to reduce the torque on the motor
Torque needed for this can be found with this equation: Torque = .5LengthMassg where g = 9.81 m/s^2
Power needed can be found by: Power = TorqueAngular_Velocity
That's a substantial piece of wood you're moving around but I think it would be well within the capability of a windscreen wiper motor assembly or electric window lifter. I don't know what packaging constraints you have, but if I were you I'd try to operate it via a crank mechanism that mechanically limited the travel to the arc you want. If you get it right it will inherently accelerate and decelerate the movement at the ends of the travel and fix the end positions for you, so you don't need any fancy control algorithms or accurate position sensing - just a limit switch or two.
