Alrighty !!!!! Soooooooooooo...found out the battery wont set inside the shell...not even at an angle. With 'necessity being the mother of invention' I fashioned a drop deck shelf with sides to hold the battery upright. The problem with that is the battery sticks up through the roof of the shell !! . Again...not to be defeated I rethought the cab area that would have to be on top. IT has to be high enough the engineer can see over the rotary anyways. PLUS now it has to cover the battery too ! No problem solved that issue ! . Keep an open mind...the whole thing is gonna get a fresh coat of paint. I have seen hundreds of photos online of some real Frankenstein rotary snow plows . Here is THE Guts pretty well done. . . 1) On the left ....The led leads where lengthened as that is going to be the headlight on top of the rotary. 2) The battery had to be shimmed to get it to stand as near to vertical as possible. 3) The red and black leads in the middle of the photo will be extended to go to the rotary up front. 4) YES...those wires in back are hooked up to a male plug that goes through the back of the shell...because......The battery in THE Rotary Snow Plow is....RECHARGEABLE !! (yes...I re soldered that black lead to its post) Just waiting on delivery of the most important part now. .
Don't really need it....BUT... It came in this.... All of the electronics I used on this project came in the Solo Beard Trimmer. The motor died in it and I...like most everyone...didn't throw it away. . The recent thread on rotary snow plows got me thinking and I tore into the thing. The only small problem was the board. It was so close to fitting that a few swipes on the edges with an emery board took care of that. Plus is...the battery is rechargeable thru the port that was in the trimmer. I saved the recharger for it to...so that's cool too. .
@mtntrainman since I fly RC airplanes, from tiny indoor ones to giant 10 ft gliders I can send you some of the smaller 150/200 lipo packs. But the problem is that you don't have the appropriate charger. The charging circuit for your trimmer is probably designed for 300 mAh packs. And charging lipos with an improper charger can cause catastrophic fires that will burn your house down! Glad you saved the charger. You won't be able to charge the battery safely unless you are into RC and have a multi-charger, good for all types and sizes of lipos.
If mtntrainman were to only do the 1S battery then likely a cheap purpose built charger for those smaller batteries would be all he needs. I've got several of the eflite and flyzone ones I could part with but they require direct battery plug in unless you use a wire extension which are available. I've even got a simple USB charger but quit using it once I became aware of lipo issues. It might work just fine but I like the confidence of using a charger with a charge status indicator that shuts off on it's own.
So a question or those in the know: With what I am using how would I slow the motor speed down... a lot ? I am sure its going to be way to fast for a rotary. I have read rotaries run at about 150 RPM. I will need to make what I am going to use slow to a crawl speed wise at full battery charge.
A 1/4 watt resistor would likely work just fine as long as the only load is that spinning disc. The value of the resistor I cannot tell you but they are cheap enough you could get several of different values to test with. You could even scavenge from some derelict electronics you may have laying around. Do you know the voltage rating of the motor? To start that info is needed so we can determine the minimal voltage drop to not over voltage the motor then experiment with different value resistors till you get the result you want. I assume you are using the motor from the shaver? If you need something smaller consider one of these SPMSA2005 (pictured below) which is a micro linear servo for airplanes. You could bypass all the electronic circuity by direct wiring to the motor. Remove the plastic plastic slider on the worm gear to prevent stoppage once it reaches the limit then attach the disc either directly to the nub or use tubing to extend to the shaft of the disc. And since you don't need the electronics you can shave the footprint of the PCB to make it fit wherever. As you can see there is already some gearing from the motor to the jackscrew so you get a bit of reduction right there. These work with 1S lipos like what you have so any added resistance should slow the motor down.
3.3V and 5V DC The specs say that using 3.3 will slow the motor down if 5 is to fast for the application. I think I will need it to rotate even slower I don't have it yet but have read the specs.
I have thought of running the battery down to a trickle...and keeping it low charged. It is not like it has to run for hours at a time. Will most likely just be a fun project to just have on the layout and turn it on and maybe run it a lap or so...now and then
Lipos don't like that. You'll ruin it real quick if you take it down much past 3.7 volts. They like to sit at 3.7-3.8 where even storing at a full charge will wear them out sooner but you run them down too far and the internal resistance of the cell builds up and again they can become a fire danger if you charge them normal. I've revived batteries like those that have been discharged too far but it requires a special procedure where you limit the charge current so as not to heat up the battery to the point it becomes volatile.
makes me wonder... The trimmer could be run down to zero and then be fully recharged. I've had the trimmer run so slow it snagged beard hairs (ouch) and stalled...lol
Likely there is internal circuitry that cuts off power once the battery reaches that ~3.2 volts. I used to run my LiPo powered RC cars like that and the circuitry would cut off at around 3.2 volts per cell which at that point there was a noticeable power degradation. I didn't know any better at the time so that is why I did it but now I set a run timer and check the batteries when that is up. I do the same for my airplanes as a loss of power in the air can be more catastrophic than just sitting on the ground lol.
I do have some resistors that came with my 3v leds. I am not sure of their value. I am just not sure if resistors have to be put in line in a certain direction. And...not sure if they can be run in series to drop the voltage further if need be. I seem to remember something about that. As you can tell...I am a big electronic dunce..
Those are probably the same resistors I have which are 1K. If the bands are brown black and then red they are 1K resistors. The gold band if it has one is just the tolerance rating. They are not directional so polarity is not an issue and if you put two or more in line/series then the resistance goes up by the total value of the resistors. So two 1K resistors in series would make 2K total resistance.
