Advisor: Dr. Patrick McDowell ET494– Senior Design Ii Spring 2016 Linear Actuator Rodney Arceneaux & Steven Parker Advisor: Dr. Patrick McDowell ET494– Senior Design Ii Spring 2016

Introduction What is an actuator? An actuator is a type of motor that is responsible for moving or controlling a mechanism or system. Applications for electric actuator Advantages of electric actuator

Objective The objective of this assignment is to build our own linear actuator and to control it using Arduino To make a cost-effective actuator without trade off in power Implement our created linear actuator in the “Strong Arm Actuator” design The “Strong Arm Actuator” design is a system of two actuators to create a two-jointed arm

Materials Materials will include CIM Dc motor 24v Victor 883 Motor Controller Sprockets Threaded Rods Chain Arduino Ultrasonic Sensor And more…

Challenges To make the linear actuator as efficient as possible Design it to make movements rapidly (unloaded) Build it to be able to handle heavy loads Make Arduino able to communicate with the Victor and then the Victor with the motor

Research The Victor 884 requires a PWM signal of 1ms – 2ms 1ms being full reverse and 2ms being full forward

Design Model Credit for original design : Ian Anderson

Design

Design

Design Issues/Troubleshooting There were a few problems we encountered with this project The first issue were the Victor motor controllers The second issue was learning how to correctly drive a signal from Arduino The third issue involved the CIM motor not turning properly The fourth issue is that the moving block gets jammed

Design Changes The guide rods help keep the moving block on the desired course When we test the threaded rod with a drill in reverse it tends to jam Modifying original design to have sliding rails instead of guide rods

Design Changes

Timeline (Fall) FALL 2015 Proposal and Presentation 10/08/15 COMPLETE Order of Materials 10/14/15 COMPLETE Arduino & Victor Interface 11/21/15 COMPLETE Research and Calculations 11/28/15 COMPLETE Final report and presentation 12/04/15 COMPLETE Build Actuator prototype 12/12/15 COMPLETE

Timeline (Spring) Spring 2016 Proposal and Presentation 2/05/16 COMPLETE Finish Building 2nd Actuator 2/20/16 NOT COMPLETE Design System for Actuators 3/10/16 NOT COMPLETE Complete Two Jointed Arm 3/21/16 NOT COMPLETE Arduino Implementation w/ switches 3/28/16 NOT COMPLETE Test load capacity 4/18/16 NOT COMPLETE Final repot and presentation 5/12/16 NOT COMPLETE

Questions?