Flipper (pneumatic) VS Lifter (electric)

[billy breach]

i see. I dont have a milling machine etc.....can anyone make and adapter for me?

[RogueTwoRobots]

There are only a couple of ways to attach the rod to the drill motor without welding, but with the rotational forces that will be going through the connection, welding will most likely give you the strongest connection.
One alterntive is what Jonny just mentioned; have a shaft collar (basically a bit of thick-ish wall metal tube) that has one half threaded to suit the thread on the output shaft of the drill motor and the other half threaded to suit the rod. You could then put some grub screws through the wall of the collar to press down against the joints once they've been threaded, just as an extra form of security.

Another option is to keep the chuck on the drill motor and put the threaded rod into that (if it's too large in diameter, see if you can get it lathed down to a suitable size) and then tighten the chuck. This won't be strong enough on its own, but if you then dill all the way through the chuck and the threaded rod (say 5mm diameter) and then put a pin or 5mm bolt through it, it will prevent the chuck from loosening and the threaded rod from falling out.

[typhoon_driver]

say you want to use 12mm threaded rod. Buy a small block of mild steel off ebay for next to nothing. Drill and tap an M12 hole through one side and drill and tap a 3/8unf hole the other. To make sure they line up, you could drill a pilot hole right through the block.

You don't need fancy machining centers to make parts, just a bit of imagination and some basic tooling

[billy breach]

thanks for all the help guys.....would the above design work though? and would a 12v dewalt xrp drill (running on 18v) be a better option for the lifter motor and gearbox?

[typhoon_driver]

Should do yeah. As for the drill motor, I can't say but a standard argos 10 quid motor would be more than up to the job, anything bigger is just for boasting purposes

[billy breach]

I have a spare 14.4v dewalt xrp drill lying around so it'll be it....and boasting lol.

[ewan]

As Gary said you should have more than enough torque for lifting be it a cheap argos drill or a dewalt, what you might want to look as is increasing the potential speed of your actuator though - obviously the faster the motor rotates the faster it will lift but also the larger the thread pitch (e.g. 12mm thread has larger pitch than 10mm). Also bringing the point the threaded rod/actuator meets the lifting arm closer to the pivot point (and adding an intermediate linkage to increase potential movement arc) are things to think about!

[typhoon_driver]

If you were after a threaded rod with a high pitch and good power transfer then you could even look at using ball screws,

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Machined-Ball ... 1c1c922830

These are using in computer controlled mills and lathes to control the axis. Precise and a 5mm pitch would be very useful but the price reflects the machining precision you get with them

[billy breach]

Those ball screw things look good. Would a 5mm pitch be a good enough pitch to make the lifter fast? Ie. So I it would take less turns to travel the distance?

[RogueTwoRobots]

Yeah with a larger pitch your lifter would move further for the same amount of turns as a thread with a finer pitch. A 5mm pitch would most likely be fine - even the pitch of scissor jack threaded rods, while less than 5mm, are larger than standard M10 or M12 threaded rod:

[attachment=0:3dxp1kyd]k3_build (36).JPG[/attachment:3dxp1kyd]

Not the clearest of pictures but you can see the threads are more spaced out compared with standard rod; this is one reason Kaizer's lifter has a good speed. The threads are also thicker and more durable, and the threads on a machine ball screw would be even more so.