Motorized Helical Cage Gear Cup

thingiverse

This is a remix of Helical Cage Gear Cup by AdditiveTech and tbutters to add a stepper motor drive that automatically spins the cups. I modified the bases slightly to lift the bearings off the base and hold them more securely. See the video for a demonstration and more information. The stepper used is a NEMA 11 stepper, commonly found on eBay or Amazon. The controller is based on a raspberry pi zero w, paired with a pololu DRV8834 and my own custom pcboard. I believe I printed the cage gears at 30% infill. Other parts were likely printed at 20% infill. The infill setting is probably not that critical. I used 0.2mm layer height throughout. Video demo available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSVv9iW4K20&feature=youtu.be I recommend printing the middle pieces in PETG or polycarbonate, or some other material that can withstand temperatures around 60C. I've measured the stepper motor temperature at 50C while in continuous operation. For those interested, I will be posting on my blog details of the stepper controller, github link to the raspberry pi software, etc. I'll update this description when the blog post is ready for consumption. Updated - 06/22/2019 * Added middle-motor-extended, the middle base with a bit more room so the picase won't rub on the middle gear. * Added triple-base, all three bases built together in one solid piece. * Added picase-cover, a cover to go over the raspberry pi case * Added middle-gear-rotor-open-full, a full-height middle gear with an open section to provide motor ventilation.