Simple Rotating Plate

Sometimes you would need a simple rotating plate for various applications but you don’t want to install a lot of sensors and transistors. Well, here’s a simple solution! With this rotating disk you can decide if you want to rotate full 360° back and forth or any other angle!



Read more for the complete article!
This post was sponsored by Farnell Electronics.


These are the few parts you will for this project:



You will need one normal 6 pin on/on switch. 
You can by this switch here:   




The switch has to have six pins and two on positions!
The most important part is a DC electric motor, which is somehow connected to a plate or disk.
The motor has to be DC. You will be able to find something appropriate for your project!
I used an old geared DC motor and added a simple plate to the axis:



Now we have some soldering to do!
Just take some wires and solder the switch’s pins together as shown in the pictures below:

The red and black wire go to the power supply.
In this case it is a 5 Volt DC pc power supply.



The blue and white wire are connected to the DC motor. Wired this way you’re able to make the connected motor go forward & backwards.
If you take the wired switch and mount it to the rotating motor as shown in the videos, the disk will rotate around whatever angle you wish.
Perfect for a simple rotating webcam:



In this setup the camera rotates full 360°.
You’re still able to control the motor’s speed via voltage or a simple pwm.
Adding another little piece of wood to the disk creates a new angle, for example 180°:



There are various possible applications!
From rotating security cameras to winding up your automatic watch, there’s so much more!



Build your own rotating disk!
Take some pictures and send me an email!


http://www.doityourselfgadgets.com

9 comments

  1. The majority of switches are break before make. This switch is wired to reverse the polarity and therefore the direction. A make before break type switch would be a dead short to the supply. There would be nothing to overcome as the motor does not need to continue to run if changing directions
    As far as "BRAKE" goes when incorporated as a switch function,that is generally accomplished in power hand tools by applying a small AC voltage to one or more windings of a DC motor.

  2. This switch has two positions, on and on. The disk's angular momentum is enough to overcome the brake before make function. Works with almost any geared motor.

  3. Thank you both for your input.

    My experience is that angular momentum has not been enough to keep my mechanism from hanging at the switches brake point. It stops just before the toggle flies to the new on state, reversing the motor.

    I was just farming for ideas. I am using precision gear-head motor with a high rate of reduction and zero backlash. The heavy brass cam I am using to operate the switch is held to firmly by the gearing continue pushing the switch.

    It seems that with a little higher speed and a little slop in the gear-head and it would have worked fine.

    I want mine to run slowly. so I will solve my problem electrically by adding a delay to the switches shut down. Just a few more milliseconds run time and the switch would be thrown. I plan to use a micro-controller rather than an C R delay or 555 timer one-shot. The controller will give me the option of adding other functions to the mechanism.

    Thank you both for your time effort and input.

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