I want to make a cylindrical pole, about 4 inches tall and less than and inch in diameter, move straight up, about 4 inches, in about a second. Also this need to be tiny. How can I do this?
An air piston maybe? What is this for?
How heavy is it?
Is there any resistance to its movement apart from its own weight / mass
What happens when it gets to the top, has it got to maintain that position?
Is power an issue? i.e do you have loads of power for this?
Linear actuator of some kind ? e.g magnetic coil?
That's a linear actuator application. You need to specify the mass and calculate the force in N-m to spec the correct actuator .
move straight up, about 4 inches, in about a second. Also this need to be tiny.
What needs to be tiny ? (the actuator or the processor ?) You will most likely need at least one if not two sensors. The processor is not a problem because you can do it with an ATtiny85 but the motor driver might be a different story. You need a power source and you have given us nothing to go on. (no motor, no driver , no processor..basically nothing but a pole , weight unknown.) Where do you plan to put the electronics package ? What does tiny mean ? (we don't even have any dimensions for "tiny".
How about some detail ?
So, I've done some research on actuators and that's almost what I was looking for. What I found was either too big, too slow, or too pricey. But now I have a different request for for the same end result, I need the pole standing straight up. Is there a way to have the pole sliced in half and layed down horizontal and at a click of a button, come up and meet its other half? I was thinking magnets to hold it together, but how can I hold it down and how can I initiate it's launch up. And the mass of this pole in total is like a between 10 and 2o grams.
It would probably help if you could tell us why you want to do this.
We need a drawing with dimensions. It would help to know why (or what ) you are trying to do.
Here are the measurements. And what this is for is sort of a helicopter. I want a box, with propellers sorta hidden, to become a helicopter. Here's a picture of kinda what I'm looking for. It doesn't necessarily have to be this way but anyway you can get hidden propellers up in a second would be awesome to know.
I think your design needs a little more work. A propeller is a specially shaped object and it is one piece, not two. You can't have half a propeller here and the other half there.
Two blades on hinges that get pushed up and then fall to the horizontal would seem easy enough. 4" tall - do you need to get airborne? Or just show spinning?
Probably best to have them hinged to the shaft that spins them - picture a servo with a control arm
http://www.servocity.com/html/servo_power_gearbox_arms.html
that the blades attach to.
If you wanted to get actually airborne, the props would have to lock down some how to prevent them from just pulling them selves up as lift is created.
Real props are a single blade each with a swash plate that controls their angle as they rotate around to keep lift balanced - more lift in the back to make the tail rise and start pulling the helicopter forward, same for left or right, or to pick the nose up. That's why many small toy helicopters have 2 sets of counter rotating blades, to offset each other.
Take a look at folding props:
A folding prop was just what I was looking for. Thanks for all the help!
