Andrew Burks

General Concept

With the current direction for the Vibraphone design, the notes are played by dropping a steel ball onto the keys.  There are several ways to actuate the balls, but considering the cycle times we want to achieve and the cost of each device (since we need 30 total) using a small motor and a wheel to push balls off of a queue and into free-fall seemed like the best idea.

The club has a few sets of tiny motors that have been donated, and each set has as least 30 motors of that kind.  The two sets we investigated are the tiny DC motors from the handheld fans, and some tiny bipolar stepper motors.

There are two trains of though for what to put at the end of the motor.  One possibility is to put a circle with a squishy perimeter on the motor, and use friction to pull balls through the mechanism one at a time.  Another concept is to cut ball-sized notches into the perimeter of a plastic circle, acting like a sprocket on a row of queued balls.

We have tested both concepts on the fan motor, and they each have their advantages and disadvantages.  After testing them both on the stepper motor in a more controlled way, we should have a better sense for which type of wheel will work best for us.

Here is a photo of the notched wheel Mike Ornstein and I milled in the roboclub CNC mill the other night.  The notches fit the balls great, but a consistent problem we had with the fan motor was that balls would jam if they tried to fill an empty queue.

Fan Motor

The fan motor is easy to control.  If you put a voltage difference between the two wires, it will spin.  If you give it a low voltage (1V) it will spin fast.  If you give it a higher voltage (3V) it will spin VERY fast.

From my observations, there just didn’t seem to be enough torque on the motor to handle the balls we were giving it.  Also, when testing with the notched wheel, the fan seemed to lack all braking ability.  Obviously with a friction wheel instead of a notched wheel the motor will be able to resist back pressure, so I look forward to seeing how that performs once we get a nicer friction wheel made (Plastic circle with a notch for an O-ring).

Stepper Motor

The club has a box of 150 tiny stepper motors with 4 wires coming out of each of them.  Starting the process knowing absolutely nothing about steppers, I eventually determined that our stepers were Bipolar Stepper Motors.  Basically, there are two pairs of wires and I need to follow a cycle of powering and releasing the pairs in different directions in a certain order so I can get the motor to ’step’ 1/48th of a rotation.

By using an H-Bridge configuration on each pair of wires, I could independently control the direction of the current in the wires with digital logic.  20 lines of C++ and an Arduino later, I had a great test rid that let me step the motor at whatever speed I wanted!

I was very pleased with the initial performance of the stepper motor.  There seemed to be a lot of torque behind the motor, despite its size.  The biggest advantage in my eyes though was the powered braking.  By setting only one set of wires in only one direction and leaving it there, the motor was in a powered lock.  This should help with the back pressure issue we were facing on the fan with the notched wheel.

Here are some photos of my final Arduino/H-bridge setup.  I was very happy because both the circuit and the program worked on the first try!  That never happens!