Using Planetary Stepper Motors to control Turnouts.

[elwoodblues]

A couple of years ago I came up with a way to control 4 turnouts using an Arduino Nano to control the turnouts on the small switching layout I was building when I worked on the road.  I figured out that I could control 4 turnouts with one Arduino Nano using 1 push button for throwing the turnout and 2 LED's to indicate the turnout direction.  If you are interested here is my YouTube video showing the prototype.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sN1HnTmX8U&pp=0gcJCUEMAYcqIYzv

Once I had it all figured out I made PC boards for this.

Now comes the "However"    On my recently built staging yard some of the turnouts are too close to the benchwork to under mount the servos so I needed an above mount system to remotely throw the turnouts.  A few months ago while at an ON30 meet a fellow member (who likes to pick my brain with anything to do with Arduino's) gave me a small motor with a gearbox and asked me if I thought if they could be used to control a turnout.  I said "I don't see why not" and said I would look into it when I has some free time.  Well the time is now.



Here are the two types of the planetary stepper motors with built in gearbox and linear screw I picked up from Aliexpress.  They are also available on Amazon and other places.

The goal is to use them to control the turnouts on my staging yard using a push button to control them and LED's to indicate direction, just like I did on my servo project.

Will I'm still in the design process I thought I would start now so you can see my trials and tribulations.

Next up, did I bite off more that I can chew?

Thanks for looking in.

[deemery]

Could you shoot a little video showing how those work?  It's not quite clear to me what actually gets moved by the motor, particularly on the right side unit.

dave

[Rick]

Ron, thanks for starting this thread.
I'm sure you'll be able to figure out how to get them to work.

[Bernd]

Those look like the drives used on disk drives to position the reading head or laser on an optical disk drive.

Bernd

[elwoodblues]

Could you shoot a little video showing how those work?  It's not quite clear to me what actually gets moved by the motor, particularly on the right side unit.

dave

Dave,

I can shoot a short video on how they work, I need to move them to the center anyway, give me a couple of days. 

[elwoodblues]

Ron, thanks for starting this thread.
I'm sure you'll be able to figure out how to get them to work.

Thanks Rick,  I think I have it figured out, just need to test it. 

[elwoodblues]

Those look like the drives used on disk drives to position the reading head or laser on an optical disk drive.

Bernd

Bernd, they are Kind of.  The ones used in disk drives usually have a longer screw