salvaging motor from printer for DIY BarnDoor tracker

[cpoc]

I've been putting off this project for some time... but I finally acquired some wood and bought myself a threaded rod and I could probably put together a manual barn door tracker... but I seem to recall reading in a thread either for a motorised Barn Door tracker or possibly even a DIY motorised Equatorial mount for a Dobsonian (the other project I'm putting off), that it may be possible to use the motor from a scanner. I happen to have an old (well only a year or two old actually) HP multifunction printer/scanner and thought why not try and use that... the problem is I'm not sure how to use that.
Has anyone had any experience extracting said motor from scanner and or then re-purposing it in a barn door tracker or similar?

[RAJAH235]

Hi,
There are quite a few threads on Barn Door trackers.
Here's one for Stepper motors.
> http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...d.php?t=101813

You may like to try a forum search for more.

The "Show us your equipment" thread has some interesting images too.
> http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=65

[cpoc]

Originally Posted by RAJAH235

Hi,
There are quite a few threads on Barn Door trackers.
Here's one for Stepper motors.
> http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...d.php?t=101813

You may like to try a forum search for more.

The "Show us your equipment" thread has some interesting images too.
> http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=65

Thanks for the suggestion RAJAH235, I had actually used the search in trying to get my base concept sorted out for the Barn Door Tracker... there are a handful of sites that seem to pop up and be the most common... I was most taken by one that had a novel idea to "solve" the drift of using a straight threaded rod (they effectively added a curved piece at the top so that as the rod turned it would also travel the curve of the added piece and help eliminate some of the drift.)

But my problem is mostly to do with the actual process of removing the motor from a scanner and then how to put that to use in the barn door tracker... as I mentioned I have seen note of it in some posts but I don't believe any have any detailed "tear downs" or instructions on the process. My question here was more in the hope that maybe someone had done it and even if they don't have pictures, if they at least had some description as to how they managed to remove it (what portions need extracting) and how to then repurpose it.

Worst case scenario I will simply build a "stage 1" model which will just be the manual barn door tracker... it simply occurred to me that I had the no longer used scanner/printer and rather than putting it out in the rubbish or similar I might as well salvage what I can.

[cpoc]

This is probably the most useful page I've found so far in regards to salvaging the motor from a scanner... though still doesn't contain any details of how the actual "salvage operation" was performed.

https://500px.com/eliperelman/storie...n-door-tracker

Some nice images of the components of the tracker itself which helps someone like me who is very visually oriented.

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Removal is the easy part, get the tools out, pull it to bits. Deciding what to keep, dependent on it's construction and internals is the harder part. I've pulled stepper motors and driver boards out of copiers\printers and various small DC motors and gear boxes but very few seem to suit DIY projects unless you know how they are driven.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by ZeroID

Removal is the easy part, get the tools out, pull it to bits. Deciding what to keep, dependent on it's construction and internals is the harder part. I've pulled stepper motors and driver boards out of copiers\printers and various small DC motors and gear boxes but very few seem to suit DIY projects unless you know how they are driven.

Salvaged stepper motors from printers and scanners are pretty common in the 3D Printing area. This page gives some useful information on how they work, how to recognise the wiring patterns, etc.

http://reprap.org/wiki/Stepper_motor

Using belt-drive to a threaded rod and an Arduino or similar as the Micro-stepping controller, you can achieve very precise control - you could even write the code so that you adjust the Micro-stepping interval as the angle changes, so that you can maintain a constant angular rate using a straight rod, eliminating the need for a curved actuator.

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/like/331236584364?limghlpsr=true&hlpv=2& ops=true&viphx=1&hlpht=true&lpid=10 7&chn=ps

A $5 geared stepper off ebay is a relatively painless way to go. They come with a uln 2003 driver chip, or hook up an easydriver board and pulse with an arduino or something similar.