TOS Communicator Build

[Borg69]

The stepper motors came in yesterday, and the news is a mixed bag. The good news: I can get it to run dead silent. The bad news is that the microstepping doesn't provide anything even close to a liner transition between physical steps. This is my first experience with stepper motors, so I didn't know exactly what to expect. I have learned that microstepping is meant primarily for noise reduction, and not for super accurate angular increments.

View attachment 1952106

Next up: driving the moire from the edge as I'd originally planned. The motor will be able to spin 13x faster than it is here, which is still very quiet and should smooth it out a lot. I already have a bunch of 3mm x 8mm x 4 mm carbon steel ball bearings, so it shouldn't be too tough to get it running smooth & sturdy

Not that I don’t appreciate the work you’re putting into this, as I’m nowhere near as technologically savvy as you- I would have found a way to make them moire lenticular stickers like they put in Cracker Jacks to make animations to save room for sound and lights.

 

[Leinads]

Not that I don’t appreciate the work you’re putting into this, as I’m nowhere near as technologically savvy as you- I would have found a way to make them moire lenticular stickers like they put in Cracker Jacks to make animations to save room for sound and lights.

View attachment 1957864

Uh, what?

 

[turner3d]

I personally would really like your tick version as a stand alone unit that could go in an existing comm replica. something that could be glued
to the upper shell with the circle cut out. i don't really care about sound and the stop watch versions tend to quit over time due to the fact
that they are about 50 plus years old.

There are quite a few pieces involved (stepper motor, microcontroller, stepper motor driver module, a couple resistors, battery and switch), but I bet it wouldn't be too tough to get everything but the battery and switch mounted to a little custom printed circuit board that would fit nicely into a normal size comm. It could maybe even have different lens/platter combos for Alpha/Beta patterns.

I hadn't thought much about a standalone because of so many pieces, but I may have to look into that