(no subject)
Argh. I think my brain is smoking from work.
We were trying to get our stepper motor to turn the sprocket the correct intervals to line up the little bullet things. Coworker one said "Oh, yeah, 24 teeth on those gears" and I was like okay, 1 to 1 ration, simple. 12 teeth in the sprocket means we need to turn the sprocket 30 degrees. The stepper motor is 400 steps per 360 degrees which means it has .9degrees per step. Then, it also has the ability to microstep at up to 256 microsteps per step. So we do some math voodoo and come up with a number, plug it into the program and...yeah, doesn't work. Not right. So we start fooling around with guessing numbers and again, nada. So we are like, is the belt slipping? Is there friction causing this? Probably the answer to both is yes but it also turns out that the two gears aren't the same size. At all.
So I have a 12 prong sprocket that needs to rotate 30 degrees which is attached to a 22 tooth gear which is attached by belt to a 34 tooth belt which is on the motor. Now 12, 22, and 34 all are divisible by 2 but none are divisible by .9 or each other. Yeah. So instead of busting my brain to figure out how to make the thing work with what we have, I am going to order new gears that work with the numbers I have. Cuz, man, trying to figure out how to get something it to line up exactly every single time is actually impossible. As far as I can figure. So yeah, frustrated at work.
And now I am trying to sync up my mp3 player and get more of the info ocntianed in the mp3s up to date (and corrected) and man is it going to take FOREVER.
Might go into town tomorrow, but then again, might now. Tired. night.
We were trying to get our stepper motor to turn the sprocket the correct intervals to line up the little bullet things. Coworker one said "Oh, yeah, 24 teeth on those gears" and I was like okay, 1 to 1 ration, simple. 12 teeth in the sprocket means we need to turn the sprocket 30 degrees. The stepper motor is 400 steps per 360 degrees which means it has .9degrees per step. Then, it also has the ability to microstep at up to 256 microsteps per step. So we do some math voodoo and come up with a number, plug it into the program and...yeah, doesn't work. Not right. So we start fooling around with guessing numbers and again, nada. So we are like, is the belt slipping? Is there friction causing this? Probably the answer to both is yes but it also turns out that the two gears aren't the same size. At all.
So I have a 12 prong sprocket that needs to rotate 30 degrees which is attached to a 22 tooth gear which is attached by belt to a 34 tooth belt which is on the motor. Now 12, 22, and 34 all are divisible by 2 but none are divisible by .9 or each other. Yeah. So instead of busting my brain to figure out how to make the thing work with what we have, I am going to order new gears that work with the numbers I have. Cuz, man, trying to figure out how to get something it to line up exactly every single time is actually impossible. As far as I can figure. So yeah, frustrated at work.
And now I am trying to sync up my mp3 player and get more of the info ocntianed in the mp3s up to date (and corrected) and man is it going to take FOREVER.
Might go into town tomorrow, but then again, might now. Tired. night.