SparkFun Forums

[RedRiddingHood]

Hi im in the process of making a TINY spinning musical box and am currently looking into solutions for this.
Im trying to keep the footprint around the 2cm mark for the electrics

Ive been looking at various hobby motors like pager motors and the like but there RPM are too high for what i want

Briefly looked at watch/clock motors but it may end up looking like its ticking around rather than spinning

I was thinking if i found a small enough stepper motor i could program this to turn slowly ? ( I haven't much experience with them so im not sure how plausible that is )
But then ide need to find the worst smallest micro controller to go with it

Any suggestions / help appreciated

Cheers

[gm]

Perhaps hacking one of these?

[SFE-Mike]

You can get stepper motors to turn at any speed you wish, but since they have magnetic cogging points, their motion can be a bit jerky, especially at slower speeds and with smaller motors. Continuous-rotation servos are definitely smoother, and easy to control if you can generate a PWM signal with a microcontroller or timing circuit.

Also check out our Micro Metal Gearmotors, which are available in 30:1 and 100:1 geartrains (http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc ... ts_id=8910) which are surprisingly tiny and strong. If their base speed is too fast, you could get them to run slower by running them through a motor driver and sending them a PWM signal.

Neat project idea, good luck and let us know how it goes!

[wholder]

Try this little puppy:

http://www.solarbotics.com/products/gm15/

Wayne