This thread will be continually added to, and will be all about the laser projector contraptions i make. They will all incorporate music to controle the DIY projectors, producing wonderful and not so wonderful laser projections. ENJOY

Also if you think i need a certain item it would be great if you told me where i could harvest it from first, as i am on limited funds about 80$ mabey 100$,

projects at the moment:
-basic XY scanner
-Laser oscilloscope
more to come....


Basic xy laser scanner with stepper motors - continuing project
Im trying to make a basic xy laser scanner from stepper motors harvested from hdd's. Every thing im using is recycled or very cheap bits and pieces, i dont really have any clear idea what im doing so a little assistance would be appreciated.

Just stating it now, i realise it will be pretty much impossible to get this scanner to output even 5k pps, might even be 1k pps.
I am doing this because i like DIY and it feels more gratifying making my own scanner from random bits(i will go and get some dt 25's after i have completed this)

Where im at so far-

I have bodged together a mecano frame around two stepper motors in an xy config-.

What im having a challenge with is how to power these motors with a certain sequence that makes the spindle step back and forth like a real galvo. What im thinking is some how modulating the power from an appropriate sorce to the motors with a microcontroller.

I've been testing it with two battery packs, combining both the negative wires, and placing the two positive wires onto the pins at the back.
that seams to produce like-able results but it isnt nearly fast enough haha.
What micro controller should i use and how could i wire this all up.

I saw some person use a uln2003a microcontroller, with 8 wires attached. 4 for the motor and 4 for the parallel port (not including the power wires ofcourse) i know this will work with one of my hdd spindles but the other only has three wires to conect to. Will it still operate fine with this driver?

if you need more info just ask.


Pictures with labes below to give you and image of what im talking about


The three pins at the back of 2nd motor


Had it wired to a stereo amp and battery, to give a modulated current to one step. Hardly worked, only produced big-ish jiggles from the base tones (low frequency = more power?)

It would be wiser i think, to make the motor go three steps, thus the middle step can be used as a refrence point. What do you think?


Bottom of first motor, a computer hdd power lead can be solderd to the bottom to conect to controller.

Laser oscilloscope with HDD
Okay so here are the pictures for the laser oscilloscope made from a 2.5" hdd, its not in its case yet but when it is i'll just edit those pics into this post. i'll also give instructions of how i constructed this set-up

Btw is any one having problems with the pic size, if you are just say so and i'll post pics as links.


This one is of the hdd, the motor for the spinning mirror is atached but i dont have a pic of it, but this should give an idea of how i made this part.
also the mirror(which is the smallest mirror in the scanner) didnt have enough suport so i used an "L" bracket from a meccano set to help.
To attach the amp to the hdd. On the bottom of the hdd just under the chip that feeds the actuator power, there is a place where the positive and neg wire can be solderd to the board, the wires should be solderd to the right of the pin set +ve for top -ve for bottom(right when the conections to the computer are facing you)


This is the amp from a subwoofer, i attached the hdd to the output cables to the speaker that i took off. i kept the volume Knob so the current could be changed higher or lower, to get the perfect amount to the hdd(if there is to much it causes it to knock loudly up against its stoppers, set it to just before this occurs) the power comes from a 2A 5v cord the, the amp is rated at 12v at 1A so it still works.


And then i just used the stereo jack and pluged in any old mp3 into the amp

And thats it for the hdd oscillator at the moment, i will post pic of finished projector soon.


-Likquidblur

[EDIT] put some of my posts together and added the laser oscilloscope to this post (to keep it all neat and tidy)

A for effort
DIY on a dime!!

stepper controllers can be gotten in kit form.

hope you can come up with anything that moves with the music

good luck- keep trying
hak

Thanks hakzaw,

I was thinking of getting one of the
kits, but they all seem to have various
features that i dont think i need. Simpler is
better IMO.

We shall see, with a bit more fiddling it should all come together.

+rep for trying and a welcome

search the forum- there has been some posts about steppers before. I have a big box of them from printers etc-- got to be something good to do with them.. Has to be useful w/ music or I am not interested. lasers--good music ---good

mix them together



aHHH-- thats what i like-

I'm not sure exactly what power those motors in particular need, but you can get some of the easy stepper drivers at AdaFruit which you can connect to an Arduino board. The best part is that it can handle two stepper motors at a time. It might be a good way to start off.

Uh, is it normal for you to work on electronics without a shirt on?

BTW, those are not stepper motors (or, at least, they does NOT LOOK as stepper motors.

Please correct me if i'm wrong, but does them not come from hard disk plates ?

If yes, they are 3 phases brushless motors ..... still they can be used for some test, yes, and applying some low voltage to one of the coils, and using the other for drive it, you can probably get some result at low speed (the fixed voltage applied to one coil act as a "retainer" (call it an electromagnetic spring, LOL) so the rotor can be kept in one reference position (without driving signal), without the need to use a mechanical spring.

Made this in 30mins to take up some time while thinking of ideas for the stepper motor do-dad

I think this is up your ally, its a laser oscilloscope ( pretty much makes a heart beat monitor thingy for your music), sadly not my idea but i did redesign it to suit my needs for whatever i had laying about.

Only one more part needed........i havent got the 6 way mirror from a laser printer that displays the x axis yet so its not finished

I have a video of my almost finished set up in action, but it is to massive to upload, so i will convert it tomorrow. And photo bucket is being a @#$%, so the pictures will be uploaded soon.

Its just an mp3 player that is connected to an amp i pulled from the back of a speaker case, which was just lying around collecting dust.
Then the amp is forwarded into a 2.5" laptop hdd, which makes the armature motor flick back and forth to the music.
The motor has the smallest mirror from a hp scanner fax system hot glued to it, to produce the y axis.

You may also notice from the video, that i have upgraded from having everything sprawled across my big bed, to a well organised solder/work bench, makes every thing so much easier to do! haha

It makes me feel more one with the machine, haha i kid i kid. but that driver sounds like an idea, i'll check it out.... thanks

yeah there not exactly like steper motors, but the only difference is (i think) that hdd drives spin smoothly before power is added. so im guessing that they still do the same thing.
And yes they're from a hdd.

yeah thats what i was trying with the stereo amp hooked to some pins and a battery hooked to the others, maybe the amp needs to be more power full to get better results?

Thanks for the input

likquidblur

Wow these look awesome, and they're not expensive. even if i buy the Arduino at the same time.
DOUBLE thanks

likquidblur

Stepper motors and brushless motors are totally diferent.

A stepper motor have usually 2 or 4 phases, and is drived with "steps" cycling through the phases, a brushless motor have usually 3 phases placed at 120 degrees angle (basical configuration), and is drived with ANALOG values applied to the 3 phases, cyclically variable as 3 different sinewaves displaced 120 degrees one from the other .....

If you hook a stepper motor driver to a brushless motor (or vice versa), you can usually end with a fried motor, or with a fried driver (or both the things, in the worse case), so careful, before spend your money

The product linked from Bionic-Badger is a good product for steppers, for DC motors and for servocommands, but NOT for brushless motors.

Yeah those are not steppers,
for steppers you need a very old Hard drive, (before the special armature ones we have today appeared)
the stepper motor in the old ones drove the armature,
have fun

Should've called this thread likquidblur's DIY corner, anyways... [Edit] i just did

This post refers to the laser osciloscope i was making last night, that is talked about in a post before. Just now its nearing completion.

After i put all the main parts together its time to put it all in a box(speaker case the amp came from) and add switches, ductape, black paint and anything else apropriate. This can be placed on say the stage/floor behind DJ speaker system facing up against the back wall, to project the oscilation made from the music onto it for a cool focal point.

i have pics and a vid of the almost finished projector (still missing the spinning mirror) but i just have to wait for it to turn 11pm before i can load images to photobucket, due to my shaped broadband (gets reset today yay ) ok video is HERE

On a weirder note i got up from my bed today really fast, and had a samba hahaha. If you dont know what that is, its when your brain gets too little oxygen and almost makes you black out, and at the same time the upper part of your body twitches like your doing the samba. bahaha my twin brother turned around just before it happend, and back again when it had passed. only belived me because my face was pale white......maybe im just weird O_o

Thanks HIMNL9 for clarifying, hmmm more reserch to be done, since its driven by anolog i could somehow incoperate a sound card/dac to drive it with music, not that the image being produced would be very pleasing
i will still buy the ardunio tho, beacuse you can make and do so many things with it... makes me drool thinking about it.

Thank you to TTerbo, HIMNL9 beat you to the mark there on that one

-Likquidblur

^ forgot to say, you can easily get steppers from almost all the old inkjet printers, if you need them ..... just get some of them from your local dumpster deposit and dismantle them ..... 90% of them have steppers for move the head, and at least 40% uses steppers also for move the paper roll (but newer ones uses DC with an encoder, for the paper movement)

Also, this can give you some good drivers IC from the PCBs, if you know how to recover them, and if in your zone is difficult to get decent electronic components like here.



EDIT: just seen your post ..... yes, for drive that motor as a deflection coil (for "oscilloscope" use), you probably need a power amplifier (audio must be ok) ..... Also, please consider a thing .... if you're planning to build something similar to a laser osciloscope, for the horizontal drawinfg you can use some mirrors (or a polygonal mirror assembly) from a laser printer ..... they have usually 6 or 8 mirrors, depend from the models ..... and also, they have usually a "zero" trigger signal, that you can use for start the drawing of the wave always at the same place for each sweep, like a normal trigger signal for a real scope (just another crazy idea, i know )

this is why i love sharing ideas and getting peoples ideas to make it better...also just to clear the mix up the oscilator projector, is something im working on to take up some spare time while i thnk of ways to make xy scanner work with music (even tho it will just be for beam effects), which will be a totaly different projector, these two together should with some smoke should make my 18 which is coming up soon just that little bit more intense

and yeah my bro and i took apart one of those big printer scanner fax machines, and i obtained 2 stepper motors but they are different values so i cant use them together. And also some servo/DC motors dont know which. Its like walking into a lolly shop so many goodies

-Likquidblur

Just an update for ya's,
I have been a busy bee planning some new projectors to build, including liquid sky effects an awesome way to make an over head beam shooter(you'll get what i mean when i show you) and a few others. This will all be controlled by a home made controller box(so while a song is playing you can choose effects to suit it) and i've scrapped the hdd spindle motors, but found some other ones that will fit the job perfectly, and less hassle in getting drivers for 'em.
Its gonna take me a couple o' weeks, but stay tuned if your interested.

-likquid

I'm interested love these cheap cool effects.

Imma stay tuned, subscribed.