Dome Pie Panel Servo Setup
Spent the last few evenings working on the dome pie panels, and after some tweaking I think I have a setup I’m happy with.
I ended up keeping the extra plate on the inside of the pie panel. It adds some detail and I like the sound the panels makes because of the extra weight. I left the hinges in the default configuration with no tweaks apart from drilling some holes to attach the servos.
I glued the hinges in place using CA glue, which sounds like it may not work so well, but I used the same glue on the hinges on the body and they’ve held up well.
Notice how the hinges are angled slightly to follow the curve of the dome.
I could have just glue the hinges directly to the dome, but I wanted to make the panels removable, so I created a small plate that glues to the dome and then then the hinges are screwed to it.
For the front Holo projector I’d purchased some push rod assemblies to attach the servos, but they were pretty expensive for something so simple, and I thought I could do better – this is what I ended up with.
It’s made up of some very cheap and readily available parts you’ll find at any hardware store. It basically some #4-40 and #6-32 screws in varying lengths, and short length of aluminum tubing that I cut up to make some linkages. I think it cost me less than $4 to make four push rod assemblies.
The long push rod is a #6-32 screw which attaches to the hinges via a piece of the aluminum tube that’s tapped at one end for the screw.
A long #4-40 screw passes through it horizontally to fix it to the hinges.
On the servo end I tap a small section of the tube on each side, and drilled a hole in the middle that allows the long screw to freely pass thru until I lock it on the side.
The servo is currently attached to the dome with some heavy-duty Velcro, which works fine right now, but I know it will eventually fail so I’ll be making a mounting brackets next.
Here’s a short video showing the setup in action
The next step is to wire all 4 servos into a PICAXE processor and tie it all together with some software to trigger sequences from the RF remote.
See Also:
- Dome Pie Panel Control
- Dome Pie Panel Hinge Experiments
- Discussion of my Pie Panel setup on Astromech.net – some really cool suggestions.