I’m thinking about hooking up these tires to the Stepper Motor: Unipolar/Bipolar, 200 Steps/Rev, 42x48mm, 4V, 1200mA which has a 5mm shaft. I’m wondering if these tires already have holes as shown in the pic or I can drill them when I receive them.
Do you have tires that fit a 5mm motor shaft?
Thank you!
Hello.
The Tamiya wheels already have holes as shown in the product picture. You can use our 5mm universal mounting hub to mount wheels like our 60mm, 70mm, 80mm, and 90mm Pololu Wheels.
- Ben
will these 2 of these wheels be able to handle a 10 lbs robot?
We don’t have any specific weight ratings for these wheels, but for what it’s worth, I did try to stand on one once and it didn’t break. I think they could handle that kind of weight just fine. My concern would be how well the stepper motor will handle 5 lbs of transverse force on the shaft. I’m also not sure you can get enough torque out of the stepper motors to move something that heavy with 6cm wheels.
Is there a reason you want to use stepper motors for propulsion? You might have better results using a DC motor with an encoder (like this).
- Ben
Ben,
The robot itself is about 5 to 10 lbs. Since I don’t know much about motor, i think stepper motors would be controlled easily by a microprocessor, and they are more precise than a DC motor. What do you think?
Here is some of the requirements of the project. I need to know the position of the robot at all time, and the maximum voltage is 10V. Any suggestion?
Thanks.
I’d personally go with the DC motor + encoder, but you might be able to get the stepper motor to work. Whatever you decide to try, I’d be interested to hear how it turns out.
- Ben
Since I don’t know much about motors, can you tell me if I can control the DC motor+encoder by using a microprocessor? How do the DC motor + encoder work exactly? Can the motor turn both ways (clockwise and counterclockwise)?
It’s just a normal DC motor (yes, it can rotate both ways) with a quadrature encoder that provides positional feedback. This wikipedia article might help (see the “Incremental rotary encoder” section), and I’m sure there are plenty of other resources on understanding quadrature encoders if you google around. You can use a microcontroller to keep track of the motor position based on the encoder outputs. We have a library that makes this easy if you use one of our Orangutan Robot Controllers, and our Orangutan SVP has built-in support for encoders (an auxiliary microcontroller on the board will read the encoders for you and report the motor position when you request it).
- Ben
