Turning giant turntables

[Mike Marandola]

In 2012 we wrapped timing belt around the outside of a lazy susan and powered it with a pulley on a window motor. (what Akash mentioned above) This displays it pretty well. You could also check out 118's 2008 turret.

[asid61]

Does wrapping the belt around something cause a "bad mesh", so to speak?
I didn't know that AM product existed. Thank you for pointing it out!
Likely we might just cannibalize that for the turntable and gears, as the mounting needs to be flexible.

[MrForbes]

We used a timing belt mounted the "right way", so it wrapped around a small pulley. We cut the belt, and screwed one end to the turret, and attached the other end with a spring, so it could skip when it ran into the stop. (this turret only rotated about 180 degrees).

[Electronica1]

Originally Posted by asid61

Does wrapping the belt around something cause a "bad mesh", so to speak?
I didn't know that AM product existed. Thank you for pointing it out!
Likely we might just cannibalize that for the turntable and gears, as the mounting needs to be flexible.

They have links on that page to buy parts separately.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by Electronica1

They have links on that page to buy parts separately.

I noticed that, but I would rather just buy the whole thing just in case we miss a crucial part.
Do you know how the table is vertically constrained? I can't see how it doesn't jump in the cad.

[Mike Marandola]

Originally Posted by asid61

Does wrapping the belt around something cause a "bad mesh", so to speak?
I didn't know that AM product existed. Thank you for pointing it out!
Likely we might just cannibalize that for the turntable and gears, as the mounting needs to be flexible.

The only potential problem would be at the two ends. I think we got lucky and our ends matched perfectly. If they didn't we didn't have to worry about it because we didn't need to go 360 degrees anyway.

[Chad987]

In 2006, 2012, and 2013 we manufactured a large (think 15") pulley that was bolted to a lazy susan similar to this.

[Mike Marandola]

Originally Posted by Chad987

In 2006, 2012, and 2013 we manufactured a large (think 15") pulley that was bolted to a lazy susan similar to this.

As seen in this video, and one of my personal favorites.

[Chad987]

Originally Posted by Mike Marandola

As seen in this video, and one of my personal favorites.

Yep! Thinking back on it now we probably should have made it out of HDPE or some other light weight plastic rather than aluminum. I also feel the need to stress how important it is to get all of teeth spacing correct. We have an extra one of those pulleys laying around that has around 3 too few teeth.

[steelerborn]

Well it may not be a turntable exactly, but if you are working on a project in the off-season to play this year's game a geneva mechanism would be really great.

You could power the lifts for all of the sections together, probably at least 3, and load 3 stacks of 6 from the hp and score them all together.

Really hope I see a bot use a system like this. Maybe I will cad one for fun later.