Arduino Low Speed Turner

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BRobbins629

BRobbins629

Passed Away Dec 28, 2021
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There are times I like to spin parts slowly ~50 rpm or less without tying up the lathe. Sometimes its for a finish application, sometimes filling a carving with epoxy and sometimes just for fun.

Started tinkering with an Arduino, added a few leftover CNC parts and a stepper motor and soon I had what I was looking for.

Any other pen turning Arduino applications out there?

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The power is all in the motor you select and how much voltage you give it. This one is pretty strong and I'm only running this on just 5V from an old computer power supply. May bump it up to 12V. The circuit can handle up to 35V per literature. Not sure how well it would cut wood at slow speeds, but with the right blade can precision cut many plastics and even metal. I have a diamond slow speed saw which I have cut many hard to cut materials for parts and segments including damascus, silver, amber, mother of pearl, abalone and jade. Its slow but does work. My thoughts are to build a little better one based on this.
 
The stepper motor would seem to be major overkill for the slow spin application, but I understand the concept of making do with what's laying around the shop. :wink: But it got me to thinking about whether a battery powered slow spin unit could be rigged up, with the intention of using it in a vacuum chamber or pressure pot. It wouldn't take much of a motor to spin a pen blank.

When I do rotocasting, there are times I would like to be able to get the piece under vacuum or pressure while it is rotating. This might have some potential.

What made you choose arduino over raspberry pi?

Ed
 
Battery should work with right motor. May need one for arduino and one for motor.

Arduino was random pick. I wanted to see what they could do and just started playing. Raspberry pi will be next
 
Cool use of a 'duino...

Stepper motors aren't really designed for torque but position. Usually their torque ratings are holding torque and rating Ounce-Inches (N cm abroad). A good nema-17 will be around 70 oz/in (50 N/cm) - at 300rpm that's around 0.02hp. Not something you want to try to cut on.
 
Paul in OKC said:
An old electric drill might could do the same?!
Click to expand...

If you want to precisely know the rpm, you would need some type of feedback loop. The primary benefit of this method is you can control the position very precisely. I run most of my stepper motors at 1/16th step @ 1.8 degrees. Meaning I send 3,200 separate motion commands from controller to motor to make a single rotation.

But you would get MUCH more torque out of the drill motor. All depends on what you're trying to do.
 
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