I've been playing around with my arduino kit tonight and come up with a little RPM counter / DRO that I'm going to use on my lathe to get an accurate rotational spindle speed.
The goal is to eventually create an electronic lead screw for this: http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/long-term-atlas-10f-lathe-restoration-modification.53210, however as the lead screw will need an RPM input, this seemed like a cheap and cheerful way to start.
The design is incredibly simple. It's basically an arduino board with a hall sensor off ebay (about 2 quid) and a 7 segment LED display, also off ebay and around 3 quid. With an after market arduino nano or similar, i think the total cost will end up around 10 quid
Here's a picture of the hacked together components:
A little video where I'm testing it with a drill (with a little magnet on the drill bit):
Finally, the source code for the software is available here:
https://github.com/hbilar/arduino-rpm-counter
Obviously needs better packaging.
The goal is to eventually create an electronic lead screw for this: http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/long-term-atlas-10f-lathe-restoration-modification.53210, however as the lead screw will need an RPM input, this seemed like a cheap and cheerful way to start.
The design is incredibly simple. It's basically an arduino board with a hall sensor off ebay (about 2 quid) and a 7 segment LED display, also off ebay and around 3 quid. With an after market arduino nano or similar, i think the total cost will end up around 10 quid
Here's a picture of the hacked together components:
A little video where I'm testing it with a drill (with a little magnet on the drill bit):
Finally, the source code for the software is available here:
https://github.com/hbilar/arduino-rpm-counter
Obviously needs better packaging.