Anyone ever made Galvos from scratch?

[DJ DoubleBass]

Those are sweet! I like the ionized aluminum parts....assuming that's what gives the gold and blue colors. I schooled in AutoCADD and CNC machines for a while, but don't have access to a shop right now. A shop like that would be pretty handy right about now for laser heat sinks, galvo parts, mounts, etc etc

[DJ DoubleBass]

Success!

I'll be posting more pictures and videos as soon as possible, but I had to go ahead and share my findings.

A quick update for those of you that haven't read this thread top to bottom, is that I was trying to create some home made galvos out of pretty normal motors. The first one I tried was this 3.1VDC stepper motor:

http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a...R-MOTOR/1.html

I put about 3 Volts to one of the coils so it would act as a "holding coil," and mounted a mirror to the shaft.

I then used a little 38 Watt audio amplifier running at maybe 20-30%, playing a song for signal....and it creates some pretty cool effects! (flawlessly synced with the music of course)

When sitting the motor on the desk, you can actually hear the music vibrating from the motor through the desk.

If too much power is put through, it'll break away from it's held position via it's holding coil, so I found a sweet spot that gives the most effect without making it jump away from it's "holding coil." It probably has around 10 degrees of a scan angle in this sweet spot.


The other motor that I gave a shot at was this TINY DC motor:

http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a...C-MOTOR/1.html

This motor is TINY...about 0.40" x 0.32" x 0.66". (using their site dimensions)

I mounted a mirror to the shaft and used a bit of hot glue to hold the mirror/shaft in place so it wouldn't creep.

I tested it with the same 38 Watt audio amplifier, but this time at around 10-15%, played the same song, and got some surprising results!

It's scan angle is TINY, (just like the motor) maybe around 5 degrees, but STILL....it's probably the tiniest galvo effect that I've seen.

I'm very happy considering that I wasn't very confident in the TINY motor creating much of an effect.

I'll post more pics and videos asap.

[T0mmm]

i made some 'galvos' out of two little motors once too, i carefully took the back of the motor off and soldered two thin enamelled copper wire to two of the contacts of the commutator, then re-fitted the motor housing minus the brushes.
i've attached a cool function generator which can make some pretty good patterns! - although obviously the motors only reacted well to the lower frequency signals

[DJ DoubleBass]

i made some 'galvos' out of two little motors once too, i carefully took the back of the motor off and soldered two thin enamelled copper wire to two of the contacts of the commutator, then re-fitted the motor housing minus the brushes.
i've attached a cool function generator which can make some pretty good patterns! - although obviously the motors only reacted well to the lower frequency signals

Cool. I wish I could see pics of those.

Nice Frequency Generator! I haven't played with one of those in a couple years...since my car audio competition days......

That will be very handy with dialing in some frequencies

[Serveurperso]

Hi,

I tested this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4-FlSAN6Cs

One open loop galvos made from old 5 1/4 floppy steppers !

There was a long time I did this (draw a square with two of them) but one stepper has blown !
http://www.serveurperso.com/photos/hene1.jpg
http://www.serveurperso.com/photos/hene3.jpg

Pascal

[mixedgas]

You might want to google ELM CHAN LASER

Steve

[buffo]

Here's the link that Steve's talking about. The guy got pretty decent performance out of his home-made scanners, but given the cheap cost of modern scanners, I can't say I'd recommend this for anything other than a project of discovery. (Where the journey itself is the reward, rather that the destination being the reward.)

Adam

[bobbell2]

I am a developer of barcode generator and my work is to make codes for barcode generator.I am just new to Galvos.I'm building myown galvo motors and for that I need some coils that I'll have to build myself to fit into the dimensions I need. Is there any technique for winding the wire or is it just straight forward hand winding? Any trick or detail that you could share would be very useful as well.

Thank you.

[masterpj]

I know elm chan had a guide online how to make your own galvos.
The only person I personally have contact with that made these galvos is dnstje.
I remember he mentioned his galvos not being that fast but the angle made little inpact on scanned graphic unless you'd change the scanspeed a little.. or something like that.. I could ask him some pointers.

[JohnYayas]

Whoever that Norm dude is followed Chans work and made some improvements to the design. I think his galvos approached 20K and he later sold them as a kit. Elm and Norm are to blame for getting me into this hobby as well as for me buying my mill and lathe since I planned on making my own galvos. But, the price dropped so fast on off the shelf galvos that I never bothered making any. I did create a scanner with a couple of stepper motors, though. The stepper motors only have 6 steps and I drove them in between poles with a couple digital resistors and a micro controller. I was able to program it to create various shapes but overshoot was a huge problem. I was actually looking for a cable yesterday and found the old stepper scanner I made. I was actually impressed that I went to so much trouble to create a nice enclosure for it considering that it doesn't do much at all.