Motorising your beloved's Time Rotor

[Lungman]

Installing a Guide rail

This is possibly THE most important part of the mechanism.  If this is installed correctly, the rotor will have nowhere else to go but up and down.  To do this, i firstly used ball-bearing type kitchen drawer runners, though these proved to be problematic when mounted vertically.  I found that the ball bearings kept falling to the bottom, and the rotor would jam half way on its way up.

*The best thing to use for this is a sliding door track and wheel system that you can buy cheaply from a hardware store.*

I then mounted this on 20mm x 20mm box shaped aluminium tube.  See the following illustration to see what I mean...



I installed 3 of these as any less than this could cause the rotor to wobble, and we don't want that to happen!



In this photo, you can see the track with the wheels interlocking it.

[Lungman]

First of all, you need:
- an old washing machine motor
- a reduction worm drive gear box.  Unfortunately, I don't know what ratio mine is!
- a door closer arm, pinch one from one of the doors at your work place, noone will notice
- a drive belt
- a frame to house all of this stuff!

here is the motor I use, it's only tiny really - out of a twin-tub washing machine.  It is a single speed induction motor.




This is the reduction gear box




This image shows the side of the gearbox taken off, you can see the worm gear at the top


This is the door closing arm that I use


Here it is attached to the gear-box.


Next, fit the motor to the wooden enclosure.  Underneath is good, as it reduces its footprint in the base of the console, and it raises the gearbox to a good height for the rotor to sit at stationary level




That's it for now!!  Going away for a couple of days.  Will be back on Thursday, so stay tuned!!!