Automate turning of manual rotary switch?

"markp" kirjoitti viestissä: snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net...

Perhaps proportional ball valve actuator, the kind you can put on a valve and control with 0-10V

-ek

hehe. No batteries to replace. Can get tuning forks from the store if you need them laying about the house. Might even be able to learn to whistle it out without one, which means you are never looking around for the darned remote any more. It does have its advantages. ;)

Jon

For this application, I'd suggest an R/C servo intended for boat rudders. Those are geared down, slow, and not too expensive. Here's an example, for $37:

There are plenty of resources on the Web on how to drive an R/C servo from a computer, so I'll let you find that

John Nagle

Thanks John. I actually haven't seem the real switch yet, but I know sometimes these things can require quite a bit of torque to overcome the click position. I think I'll need to measure it first so I can choose an appropriate R/C servo.

Mark.

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Sure, but what you measure is torque reaction on the motor housing.

Just about as ugly as it needs to be, this thing is out of site in a control room and there's plent of room as it's an open rack. What they don't want is to modify any of the control logic or wiring as they have a maitenance contract with a third party. I want to come up with a solution that's completely non-intrusive that simply automates the otherwise manually controlled on/off switch.

Mark.

Fer example, controlled by grabbing the shaft on the top (feeding the shaft thru the stepper to the manual knob)? Or grabbing the shaft on the bottom. Oh, yes....do not forget to allow pinkies to be grabbed, pinched, mashed, flattened when contoller is doing its thing...

OOOhhhhhhhh! *Real* _metal_ gears??? Almost sounds like 20+year old surplus stuff. Where?

I lied--it's $120. I bought one for $110 back in January.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

If all you want to do is switch it on and off, why not just leave it on and switch the power to it with a relay?

How far apart are the positions ?

This looks like its going to be a Real Rube Goldberg type of operation. :-)

hamilton

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You can do it that if you want, many do.

Thanks!!

Maybe a dirty trick of laser interference on the shaft?

I think so, at least to put some holes in it. There are a few pre-existing holes that I could use if necessary but not quite in the right place.

Mark.

"JosephKK"

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Maybe it does not have to be laser interference, you could just measure=20 the angular displacement of a couple of pair of optical encoder rings=20 mounted to the shaft. You can even get sealed versions for dirty=20 environments.