I want to make a small animated construction site on my HO layout. A movable backhoe scoop, moveable bulldozer (poss bucket lift). and a movable dump. I want to keep it simpls. Its just a road crew next to a circus so I dont really want to distract from the circus. What kind of motors would I use, and what to control them.
Thanks in advance,
Michael,
There are lots of possibilities here. Stepper motors, geared motors with cams, Muscle wire (shape memory alloy) can all produce movement. For something that repeats, like a truck moving back and forth use a low geared motor driving a cam shaft or a belt, for the bucket on a backhoe some SMA can produce small linear motion that can be amplified with a lever (like on the real thing). I’ve used some old toy parts, some computer motors, and some radio Shack gearboxes and chain drives, for various animated things. The local garage is going to have the doors open, engine reving and a cloud of smoke, sometime in the future.
I’ve recently been experimenting with the muscle wire (just google muscle wire) for operating semaphore signals and the action is great, not snap like the solenoids I was using.
For control,
I use a push button or a picaxe (google picaxe) which is easy to program, or a good old 555 timer.
Good luck, animation is a lot of fun if you’re prepared to experiment with it.
cheers
Simplest are gear motors and lever or cams. I find in the 5 to 6 rpm range are great for most layout animation. Here’s a link to a simple motor http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item/DCM-245/400400/6_RPM_GEARHEAD_MOTOR_.html , or the motors for Faller Horsehead Oil pumps work well. Fred