Hi
I have stumbled upon simpleFOC and looks like the answer to my prayers! I am building something and am quite good on the mechanical and fabrication side but I am a bit too much ‘work with my hands’ for my own good. When it comes to code and electronics I become a little stuck and don’t have as much understanding as I would like.
I am trying to learn though and have been lurking for a while. I am hoping that if I state what I am trying to achieve someone may be able to point me in the right direction.
I am trying to run a lead screw at around 4rpm using a gimbal motor as a direct drive, with some adjustment on a potentiometer to go a couple rpm or so +/- . On a momentary switch I would like the motor to be able to run at a much higher rpm for a few seconds, as and when required.
I have managed to do this using two DC gear motors, (one low rpm and the other high rpm) with pulleys on sprag bearings and belts. This works but is noisy and requires making belts, pulleys, etc.
I like the idea of direct drive from the motor to reduce the amount of parts and more importantly, using a brushless gimbal motor, I am hoping it will be near silent. Silent and smooth are highly desirable to me in this scenario. Also the small flat size of a gimbal motor makes the fit ideal too.
I have bought a gimbal motor with 11KV and have a couple others on the way, which are around 25kv and 75kv.
I am hoping FOC will allow me to run one of these motors at 5rpm (from what I gather they can) and also at a much higher rpm on a momentary switch.
I have tried running the motor with an ESC but it’s noisy, torque is low and movement is a bit jerky. It’s also running too fast at around 20rpm minimum. Hence looking at FOC as I suspect it will sort these problems.
Please could I ask, what would be the most suitable solution for this, I presume the SimpleFOCMini mini with a particular driver? I would like to be able to control the motor with a potentiometer for the speed at around 5rpm, use a manual switch to turn it on and off and a momentary switch for the brief higher speeds from the same motor.
I only need the motor to run one way as the carriage on the lead screw will manually be lifted back to the start. I will be pressing start and it will slowly move in one direction until it gets to the end. Will I need a positioning encoder for this?
I need to make a bunch of these so a simple solution is what i’m hoping for.
Many thanks
Andrew