I am working on building a mechanism which pulls a sheet of paper and rolls it onto a shaft attached to a motor. I need to pull a certain length of paper, stop, and then repeat.
For eg. Pull 2 cm of paper, wait (while a camera clicks a picture), and then pull 2 cm again so that the paper moves forward.
It is basically a feed forward mechanism, wherein I can control when to have a rotation. I checked online about which motor would be better, but I read that step motors tend to overheat if on heavy loads, and servos have a restricted range of motion. I need to keep this mechanism running for a few hours, and hence I was wondering which motor to use, and whether there exists a compatible arduino board + interface for it.
Any help would be appreciated
Sound like a good job for a stepper motor.
harbarex:
I am working on building a mechanism which pulls a sheet of paper and rolls it onto a shaft attached to a motor. I need to pull a certain length of paper, stop, and then repeat.
For eg. Pull 2 cm of paper, wait (while a camera clicks a picture), and then pull 2 cm again so that the paper moves forward.
It is basically a feed forward mechanism, wherein I can control when to have a rotation. I checked online about which motor would be better, but I read that step motors tend to overheat if on heavy loads, and servos have a restricted range of motion. I need to keep this mechanism running for a few hours, and hence I was wondering which motor to use, and whether there exists a compatible arduino board + interface for it.
Any help would be appreciated
Welcome to the Arduino forum.
As was written, the proper stepper motor will be the easiest to control, unless the movement is based on the actual length of paper being pulled. If you can use the "step count" instead of paper length, then a stepper is indeed what to use.
Any motor gets warm. You did not mention if the motor needs to hold tension on the paper or not. That is where heat may be a problem. Stepper motors are designed to use pretty much the same current whether they are moving or holding. A regular motor is not designed for holding position and will quickly get hot!
The next thing on your list to to measure the force necessary to pull the paper and to hold the tension, if necessary. Then you can begin to size the motor for your project.
Paul