It's been a while

Routing the cables through the bearing.

...since the last update. That's, well, mainly because there hasn't been that much progress to report on. Been rather busy with Real Work (TM). I did manage to get a bit of time to work on the moco head a while ago, the current assembly is a kind of an hybrid of the metal and plastic ones: i used some steel bits to reinforce the plastic construction.

Further, after a pretty long adventure in the belly of the custom and postal offices, some more parts arrived. Namely, the motors and control board for the moco - i put the original parts to the CNC machine. The Domo*pes board has the motor drivers built in, which is rather convenient. So, the moco head now has the motors, as well as the necessary power transmission, belts and pulleys to make it work.

While assembling, i noticed some design silliness in my original plans - nothing that would stop the head from working, but stuff that i will definitely redesign for future models, if i ever get that far. Again, the lesson here is that what looks good on the computer screen may work, but it just as well may not.

Head on top of the temporary base.

In other words, planning ahead does reduce the number of mishaps, but not eliminate them altogether, with my engineering skills at least... in this case, the way i thought i'd secure the motors (just by the friction caused by sandwiching the mounting plates to the frame) was way too flimsy - i added extra bolts to tighten it up. A somewhat working temporary solution, but far from optimal.

Some things worked as planned though: routing the cables through the center hole of the large aluminum bearing at the base of the moco head still feels like worth the effort. This way the cables are not a problem when i.e. panning the head more than 360 degrees. Of course, even with this configuration, the cables will get twisted if the head is rotated too many times, but i don't really think that is a big issue in practice.

Also, i did assemble a temporary base for the head, well, to some extent. No wheels or motors etc. yet. Just the frame. This is actually not at all how i planned it, but might work for now.  The good thing with this new configuration would be that it'd run on a narrower track, the same width i use with the manually operated miniature dolly. This would be a big plus for compatibility, obviously.