Open Source Turntable Traction Drive

zorlack

Member
There are many like it, but this one is mine: Turntable Traction Drive

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This is my open source design for a turntable traction drive. If you have a welder, and a nearby steel shop you can make one for about $3,000.

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It weighs in at 244 lbs and but can be easily ratchet-strapped to the side of an existing turntable.

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We had no difficulty turning a 23' turntable at 2.3RPM using a single 15A 120V supply.

The project comes with a comprehensive set of documentation and is available on Github.
 
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How’s the stopping on that. It looks like it’s spinning pretty fast maybe it’s just the video
 
How’s the stopping on that.

Well it has no parking brake, so for that reason its mostly well suited for high-inertia turntables with moderate friction. For example, the 23' turntable comes to a stop perfectly within reasonably well defined deceleration ramps.

The smaller turntable has less inertia, so dynamic braking is quite easy, but because it weighs much less it has a tendency to turn when pushed forcibly. That said, the drive is always engaged, and the force has to go backwards through the worm gear reduction, so it's still feels pretty good to walk on and resists slipping.

This topic is covered briefly in the safety section of the documentation.

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Edit: @Amiers just to answer your question more specifically, on the small turntable we come to a stop within 0.5 seconds reliably with five cast members on the turntable. On the large turntable, we set a 1.0 second deceleration time because we didn't want to torque the set too badly during decel.
 
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Neat. Similar in operation to ours, except ours only has a single drive tyre, and it's permanently installed.
 
Well it has no parking brake, so for that reason its mostly well suited for high-inertia turntables with moderate friction. For example, the 23' turntable comes to a stop perfectly within reasonably well defined deceleration ramps.

The smaller turntable has less inertia, so dynamic braking is quite easy, but because it weighs much less it has a tendency to turn when pushed forcibly. That said, the drive is always engaged, and the force has to go backwards through the worm gear reduction, so it's still feels pretty good to walk on and resists slipping.

This topic is covered briefly in the safety section of the documentation.
A very well written CYA.
 
It has to be more than CYA. This is a big heavy powerful machine. It will likely outlive my interest in it.

It's important that whoever "the-next-guy" is knows the limitations and considers them. For this reason, the machine comes with printed documentation as well as a sticker.

I'm trying to make sure the safety protocols stick (literally) to the machine.

(also, see my edit above providing example ramps)
 

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