Positioning subject with floppy drive head

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acerola
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Positioning subject with floppy drive head

Post by acerola »

I'm still thinking about positioning subject for stacking. One of my idea is stepping motors. There are a lot of stepping motor available in different equipments. eg.: Printers, drives.

One of my idea is positioning the subject with the head of floppy drive. It's main advantage, that it can easily controlled via computer. It's cheap. It must be accurate. The downside is that the distance between tracks are only 0.19 mm. It is not enough for small subjects.

What is the subject size when it can be usable in practice?
Péter

elf
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Post by elf »

Can you post some pictures of the setup?

acerola
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Post by acerola »

I do this setup today. I have to search the internet to position the floppy head, but it turned out to quite easy. There is a direction pin and a stepping pin on the floppy disk interface.
So I put a switch to the stepping pin and whenever I wanted a step I pushed it.

The result is here I'm not quite satisfied with it. It is a day and a half work of researching, assembling, photographing and keeping my 8 month old son out of the way.
Péter

acerola
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Post by acerola »

elf wrote:Can you post some pictures of the setup?
It is a complete mess. I don't have dedicated working place, I do it on the kitchen table. I take a picture with a compact camera. I did not see it yet.
Péter

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

I often wondered if you could reverse the principle of levers to produce small steps on a slider, provided there was not much play in the system. That is couple the short end of the lever on the pivot side to the slide through a linkage and then have some form of adjustment screw acting on the long end of the lever.

Advancing the screw by one turn at the long end of the lever then would only move the slide a minute amount at the short end of the lever. The longer the long end of the lever in proportion to the short end the other side of the pivot, the smaller would be the steps? Just a thought.

DaveW

acerola
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Post by acerola »

Yes I thought about it. But I'm not too good in mechanics. And it has a rotation movement in it if you don't use sliders at the end.

I'm thinking on making the same with a CD drive. It must be a better stepping resolution.

So this was the setup. Once again it is a makeshift setup. :oops:

Image
Image
Péter

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

Don't like that big "Z" of waggly wire Peter. I would think oscillation would take quite a while to settle after each step movement disturbed it?

DaveW

acerola
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Post by acerola »

You are right, but the result was not that bad. All I can rely on is the shortness of the flash light.
Péter

Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Péter,

Clever. A lever arrangement, with a long and short arm as Dave mentioned would allow you to set proper movement increments.

Charlie

acerola
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Post by acerola »

Thanks Charles. I'm still thinking on it. But you gave me another idea.
Using a level mechanism with changeable ratio. (Now I think Dave just mentioned the same) In that way I could set the stepping for each subject.

I will try the CD Drive also. I will ask some spare parts in out IT department to start with.
Péter

Cyclops
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Post by Cyclops »

Wow i'd never seen this,amazingly inventive
Canon 5D and 30D | Canon IXUS 265HS | Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro | EF 75-300 f4.5-5.6 USM III | EF 50 f1.8 II | Slik 88 tripod | Apex Practicioner monocular microscope

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