This week I worked more on my 3D zoetrope project. After getting the motor running last week and realizing using the potentiometer for speed control would not be great I decided to let the motor just run at the speed it was and work on trying to configure the lights. In order to do that I needed to figure out the speed of the motor. I did that by hooking up the encoder wheel on the motor to an oscilloscope. The encoder wheel is just a small disc on the back of the motor with magnets inside that can be used to read the position of the motor.
Later in the week I decided to do something about the shaft collar on the motor. The old shaft collar was 3D printed and was a loose fit on the motor causing it to free spin and not reach as fast as it could go. To fix this problem I used the metal shaft collar designed for the motor I am using. I had to completely redesign the disc to completely but that wasn't an issue. Decided to spray paint the disc matte black to give it a sleeker and cleaner look than the previous disc as well. Soon I will have to rewrite the code and recalibrate the strobe lights on the zoetrope to sync them up again because the speed has now been slightly altered.
Comments