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Slip rings - Homemade? - Other option?

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atferrari

atferrari

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About two years ago I tried to implement kind of a elementary robot (platform with motorized wheels).

Each wheel+motor at the low end of a vertical axis. The axis able to spin more than 360 degrees with no physical limitation. Obviously, this last dictates for slip rings to convey power and sensing to/from wheels.

My search in the web at that time gave many options but all of them extremely expensive. :(

My questions:

a) Do I have any other option?

b) Has anyone be able to produce homemade slip rings, reliable enough? I presume that I would need, ground, power and three more lines per wheel.

My bot/paltform should be small and light. It would be built to try some ideas on motion control, mapping and distance calculations.

Any reply will be much appreciated.
 

Design a PCB with as many copper ring (with some plated through holes t the other side) as you need for your slip ring. Ideally you could plate them with gold..
Manufactture a block of plastic in such a way that small holes are drilled at exactly the same distance as the rings are, and first ≈2mm slightly bigger in diameter. Machine pins that will have a cross-section as the letter T. Use tiny springs behind the pins..
Now mount this construction on a shaft at a distance, so the springs will be pushing pins to th rings..
On the other side of springs you can locate small washers to which you can solder wires .. and this is your home-made slip ring ..
Easy said .. not easy to build ..
Regards,
IanP
 

    atferrari

    atferrari

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I can not envision where the block goes :( but I started, thanks to you, to think of a way to do something. 8O

I am scared about final size. My mechanical ability... :( I doubt about it. But time to time.

If you could please elaborate...

Thanks

Agustín Tomás
 

If you are just going to "...try some ideas on motion control, mapping and distance
calculations." I would recommend you not to get stuck on this issue and use
cables twisted around the axes instead.
Then, if it turns out that you control algorithms are a success, you can find
someone willing to pay for further development. :wink:
 

On Monday I will take a photograph of a small slip ring as I described in my previous post. One picture may be much better than 1 million words ..
Regards,
IanP
 

As promissed yesterday, here is the photo of a slip ring. The biggest ring is only 50mm in diameter and you should be able to se the two top pins and the block of pins with its bottom pcb, where the round pads are the exact spots of the remaining 6 pins..
Regards,
IanP
 

Hi

Have you tried using Sealed Bearings as Slip Ring ?
 

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