This is the mount for our drive train’s rotary encoders. We can’t ever do anything the easy way, it seems.
It’s built from 1/8" thick Delrin sheet, laser cut and layered together. There’s a laser cut sprocket inside the enclosure that’s fixed to the encoder.
do you have a model of this or some photos of this broken out? Seems very interesting I’d love to know more…
Now that is a work of art!
Does the chain engage the sprocket on top and bottom?
Nice is the sprocket engaged just in one spot or in two?..Is there a cutout view of the sprocket?
While this solution is very cool, why not just mount the encoder a more traditional (ie simpler) way?
Wooo, completely unnecessary and absolutely beautiful. Why’d you decide to do them this way?
I would, too. 
I wasn’t responsible for this; it just appeared after we’d asked one of our mentors to take the lead in mounting the encoders. He likes his laser cutter.
This would’ve been designed in Microsoft Visio. I can try to get a look at the drawings some time this week and maybe even recreate the parts in Solidworks – but it’ll be, necessarily, a low priority.
It’s an 18 tooth sprocket that engages at both the top and bottom.
This is a pretty simple method, all things considered, since we have the laser cutter to work with. Manufacturing time might have been as long as five minutes. Development probably took as much as thirty minutes. “Traditional” methods would’ve involved manufacturing and adding a hard point to the chassis to fix the encoders in place and devising a system of gearing that connects to the existing drive components. Comparatively, this was a walk in the park.
I can see us spending a whole work day, 3 people, mounting encoders on a gearbox they were designed to fit on…looks like you’re far ahead of the curve on this! And it looks great also.
Hi there. Thanks for that nice close-up. I’d like to know more like where did you get the encoder? How much did it cost? Is it an absolute encoder. Programming etc…
Cheers.