windshield wiper motors for robot drive motors ?

Pogo

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Nov 28, 2005, 1:14:26 AM11/28/05

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I saw an ad on eBay for a couple of windshield wiper motors - suggesting
they would be good for robotic drive motors.
Has anyone used these type motors ? Pros ? Cons ?
Thanks !

D Herring

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Nov 28, 2005, 2:12:34 AM11/28/05

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I bought a few at the local junkyard (car salvage) a few years ago for
$10-$15 each. Prices may vary. Ebay might not be the best place to buy
these; I imagine their weight makes shipping expensive.

Pros: High torque, durable design. Mine had a few terminals; you could
use them to select different speeds. Run on standard 12v. Cheap.

Cons: Somewhat awkward lever arms. Moderately high current
requirements. Rather slow since they're geared so heavily. Hard to get
"standard" parts. No encoders. Used.

- Daniel

Gordon McComb

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Nov 28, 2005, 10:57:56 AM11/28/05

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Most windshield wiper motors are pure crap for robotics. They're made to
turn in one direction, and many exhibit a 20-25% speed loss in the other
direction. They're loud and inefficient; neither problem is too critical
for an automotive application, but important for mobile robotics.

But they're cheap.

-- Gordon

Pogo

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Nov 28, 2005, 5:26:36 PM11/28/05

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Thanks Gordon, just the kind of info I needed.
I figured they would be slow, but had no idea about the reverse speed issue.
Glad I haven't bought any yet!

P.S. Do you get any spam using your "NOSPAM" address? ( I'd like to switch
to that form but I got hit so bad on some newsgroups a year ago that I am
now gunshy. )

"Gordon McComb"

JGCASEY

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Nov 28, 2005, 6:33:01 PM11/28/05

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My first robot used 12v windscreen motors and indeed the motors
did run faster one way than the other. However I have another
robot base which uses 24v windscreen motors and they appear
to work fine in both directions. I don't know about their efficiency
but they are powerful enough to move furniture, crash through
walls and burn out the tyres if the robot base hits a wall without
any stop button.

As for noise I liked them because compared with a high geared
motor they make hardly any noise at all. The electronic control
was too expensive however as they did use a lot of watts and
the base had to be out of welded steel to hold the weight of
the motors and batteries.

When I tried some light weight motors from a kids battery driven
car the noise of the gears was horrendous. I was going to use
a toy tank base as a cheap robot platform until I heard the noise
and realised I and the wife would be driven mad with that thing
moving around the house.

-- John

D Herring

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Nov 28, 2005, 10:10:05 PM11/28/05

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Pogo wrote:
> P.S. Do you get any spam using your "NOSPAM" address? ( I'd like to switch
> to that form but I got hit so bad on some newsgroups a year ago that I am
> now gunshy. )

If in doubt, give spamgourmet.com a try. They've been reliable for the
couple years I've used them. Only adds a delay of a couple minutes per
email.

- Daniel

Gordon McComb

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Nov 29, 2005, 1:17:31 AM11/29/05

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Pogo wrote:
> P.S. Do you get any spam using your "NOSPAM" address? ( I'd like to switch
> to that form but I got hit so bad on some newsgroups a year ago that I am
> now gunshy. )

I used an unspammed address for so long it doesn't really matter, but I
figured it can't hurt in trying to avoid even more. For a while I was
getting upwards of 600 spams a day, from harvests of my e-mail on Web
sites and on newsgroup postings. I still get >200/day.

-- Gordon

@@

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Nov 29, 2005, 9:46:18 PM11/29/05

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An alternative is car headlight motors, I used a couple I pulled from a
Toyota Celica, worked great. They even have a knob on the shaft for raising
the headlights manually if the motor failed. I attached a shaft encoder to
this and got great feedback.

Don't what their duty cycle is like though, they might overheat if used
really heavily.

-Will
"JGCASEY" <jgkj...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:1133220781.6...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

zwge...@gmail.com

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Nov 30, 2015, 4:13:57 AM11/30/15

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