Motorizing model part - pick your brains

[CosmicQuest]

Hey friends. As I am finishing up my lunar diorama, I am in the planning process of my next build, which is an old school colony transport. This will have a section that is supposed to spin to simulate gravity. I am toying with the idea to actually motorize it. I wanted to pick your brains to see what you all thought would be the best way to do this? I think it would be great to make it slow enough to match the scale of the vessel, which will be n scale. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated, even if your thought is to tell me not to try it, lol.

 

[modelerdave]

Check out Lou Dalmaso's and Ken Sprigg's videos on how they motorized the rotation of the 2001 space station V. Lou's channel is aztec dummy. They set the rotation at 1 rpm to match the scale of the model.

 

[TazMan2000]

AC powered gear motors are the way to go. You can get them in a variety of speeds, but if you need something very specific, you'll have to gear it down or up yourself but adding more gears.

TazMan2000

 

[CosmicQuest]

Check out Lou Dalmaso's and Ken Sprigg's videos on how they motorized the rotation of the 2001 space station V. Lou's channel is aztec dummy. They set the rotation at 1 rpm to match the scale of the model.

Thank you modeler Dave! I will do that for sure! Thanks for the tip!!

 

[CosmicQuest]

AC powered gear motors are the way to go. You can get them in a variety of speeds, but if you need something very specific, you'll have to gear it down or up yourself but adding more gears.

TazMan2000

Thank you Tazman! I will look into those as well.

 

[Pixelworks]

It requires a bit more of a learning curve if you do not have the needed background experience in programming, but I use a stepper motor and control it with an arduino.

The advantage over normal AC/DC motors is that you will usually not find that perfect motor that spins at just the right rpm, Like Tazmann mentioned, AC/DC motors need to be mechanically geared up or down, unfortunately that gearing needs more space than I usually have. Steppers need a microcontroller to tell them how fast to take each step, forwards/backwards, stop, start speed up, slow down, return to point x... everything is possible. On top of that, I am usually pressed for space in the interior of my models, and steppers are only a fraction the size of their AC/DC equivalents.

For me, I usually have an arduino chip in my models controlling the LED blinking patterns anyway, so adding a stepper into that mix is not really an extra effort.

 

[CosmicQuest]

It requires a bit more of a learning curve if you do not have the needed background experience in programming, but I use a stepper motor and control it with an arduino.

The advantage over normal AC/DC motors is that you will usually not find that perfect motor that spins at just the right rpm, Like Tazmann mentioned, AC/DC motors need to be mechanically geared up or down, unfortunately that gearing needs more space than I usually have. Steppers have a microcontroller that tells them how fast to take each step, forwards/backwards, stop, start speed up, slow down, return to point x... everything is possible. On top of that, I am usually pressed for space in the interior of my models, and steppers are only a fraction the size of their AC/DC equivalents.

For me, I usually have an arduino chip in my models controlling the LED blinking patterns anyway, so adding a stepper into that mix is not really an extra effort.

Thanks, Pixelworks. It would seem like that'd be a great option to take. I'm definitely up for learning Arduino. Will definitely think about something like that for a future project as well. I've also been thinking about using an Arduino for custom lighting set-ups for future projects. There's never enough time for all the cool things.