Spring 2017 BiPed – D.C. Motor Stress Experiment
By: Abraham Falcon (Electronics and Control)
Approved By: Alexander Clavel (Project Manager)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Electronics and Control engineer job is to do an experiment on the D.C. motor to see if it can the handle the weight needed for the biped to walk. The following experiment was to determine if the chosen D.C. motor can handle the Biped’s total weight while one foot is off the ground and the other supports the entire system. The maximum stress weight of the Biped was chosen to be at 500 grams which is also what was used to determine out projects mass allocation. The test was also done to calculate exactly how much power consumption came from the D.C. motor and to determine if this would be acceptable to last up to the 30 minutes duration for the Pacman Game.
Experiment
Table of results:
| Servo Motor | Stress Weight | Operating Voltage (Volts) | Stress Current
(Amps) |
| Pololu 200:1 Plastic Gearmotor | 500 grams | 6 volts | 100 mA |
This experiment was done by hooking up the D.C. motor to a battery rated at 6 volts and with a digital multimeter in series. The weight of 500 grams was attached to a custom-built pulley wheel that was attached to the shaft of the D.C. motor. Also the radius of the custom-built pulley wheel was measured out to be about 1cm.
Here is an example of the D.C. motor connection without the weight and you can see that with no load the D.C. motor runs at the highest of 62.289 mA
The setup from above picture was used but added a custom-built pulley wheel to the motor with a weight of 500 grams. The D.C. motor lifted the weight of 500 grams and the current was measured. From observation, this D.C. motor can handle the stress weight of the biped at 500 grames and the current was measured to be at its highest of 100 mA. All recorded results from this experiment is listed on the table of results above.
Here below are two pictures of the custom-built pulley wheel which was used for the experiment of Biped’s stress weight.
Conclusion
Performing this experiment, it showed that this Pololu 200:1 Plastic Gearmotor will allow for the Biped to be able to walk and also shows that for the current, the power consumption is low enough for the D.C. motor to be able to last for 30 minutes. This experiment concluded that this D.C. motor will work and it does fit our requirements for this Biped. In the references section, there is a video starting from 5:01 till 6:02 that shows how the custom-built pulley wheel was made and used for this experiment. The second reference was also a basing of the setup of this experiment to lift the weight and measure the current of the D.C. motor.