Decisions on gearing to apply to the laser rotation motor.
So, I reviewed my Raspberry Pi 3D scanner notes and it looks like I didn’t decide on a final gearing option for the laser rotation motor after all. My “final” option for now is to use the Lego MINDSTORMS kit motor and gears to rotate the laser. Fair enough, it’s good enough to get me started, but I know I’m going to want something better for larger scale usage.
So, although I know I looked at this before, I must not have saved the links to the great website with information on motor gearing and the energy efficiency of different gearing solutions. So first I went searching around to try to find a near analog to that website, which is also the website I learned about the option of planetary reduction gears at.
20181117/DuckDuckGo micro motor gear reduction
20181117/DuckDuckGo electric motor gear reduction
20181117/DuckDuckGo electric motor gear reduction ratio
20181117/DuckDuckGo planetary gear for small electric motor
A different website that may be useful for getting supplies.
20181117/https://www.powerelectric.com/electric-planetary-gear-motors/
Wikipedia article for background information indeed confirms that planetary reduction gears are great for getting high-torque with a small package.
20181117/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_gear
UPDATE 2018-12-17: I found a very interesting note on the planetary gear Wikipedia article that is quite pertinent to my 3D scanner development.
During World War II, a special variation of epicyclic gearing was developed for portable radar gear, where a very high reduction ratio in a small package was needed. This had two outer ring gears, each half the thickness of the other gears. One of these two ring gears was held fixed and had one tooth fewer than did the other. Therefore, several turns of the “sun” gear made the “planet” gears complete a single revolution, which in turn made the rotating ring gear rotate by a single tooth like a Cycloidal drive.[citation needed]
20181117/DuckDuckGo small electric motor metal gear planetary efficiency 20181117/DuckDuckGo dc motor metal gear planetary efficiency
This looks like it must either be the website or a near analog of what I’ve found previously. Last time I visited the website mainly to confirm that a 1000:1 gear reduction ratio was feasible with commercially available options.
20181117/https://www.anaheimautomation.com/products/brushless/brushless-gearmotor-item.php?sID=157&pt=i&tID=98&cID=47
20181117/https://www.anaheimautomation.com/index.php
20181117/https://www.anaheimautomation.com/products/brush/dc-gearmotor.php?tID=102&pt=t&cID=46
20181117/https://www.anaheimautomation.com/products/brush/dc-gearmotor-item.php?sID=255&pt=i&tID=102&cID=46
20181117/https://www.anaheimautomation.com/products/gearbox/spur-gearboxes-list.php?cID=31
20181117/https://www.anaheimautomation.com/products/gearbox/spur-gearbox.php?tID=146&pt=t&cID=31
20181117/https://www.anaheimautomation.com/products/gearbox/spur-gearbox-item.php?sID=301&serID=1&pt=i&tID=146&cID=31
Another different website that may be useful for getting supplies.
20181117/http://www.powerjackmotion.com/product-category/gearbox/planetary-gearbox/
So, now it seems like the verdict is that if I want to get a planetary reduction gearbox for a DC micro motor, I may need to look around for perhaps a Chinese vendor of the products. ZHAOWEI is my current pick for now.
20181117/DuckDuckGo planetary reduction gear dc motor
20181117/DuckDuckGo planetary reduction gear box dc motor
20181117/DuckDuckGo planetary reduction gear box dc
20181117/https://www.zwgearbox.com/
20181117/DuckDuckGo zhaowei plastic planetary gearbox
20181117/http://www.microplanetarygearbox.com/
20181117/http://www.microplanetarygearbox.com/supplier-63756-micro-planetary-gearbox
Some of their product offerings are about planetary reduction gearboxes integrated into the DC micro motor package, which is not what you want if you want to reuse an old existing DC motor.