Hi there sorry missspelt actuator!!!! about to start a new mod around an lian li pc71 and lookin to make the door open out on a acuator, so it open up like a labogini. but i'm a bit off a noob when it comes down to electronics like that. any advise on what i should be looking out for? and how could i wire it up to a psu? any suggestions would really be helpfull as im confused on this one. cheers guys
So you want to have the side panel open Out? or rotate up? Either way you are up for some hefty gearboxes/servos for that, since a case panel is fairly heavy. High end Remote Control and/or robotics stuff is what you are after.
Yeah want the same sort of impression that a lamboghini door does os thats liek rotating up nd slightly out. have seen the hinge for one before but cant remember where! or if not that u remember gull wing car doors? will have to weigh the case doors when they arrive!
A gull wing door is much easier, as you just need a couple of regular hinges and your drive servo can attach say 1/4 of the way down the door, so you'll still need a fairly high torque servo. I've seen lightweight carbon fibre panels but they aren't cheap so i'd just stick with alluminium and a high torque servo. Now for a lamborghini style door... that would look the best, but you'd need to either cnc or hand make a custom hinge for it. I haven't seen any hinges that will move sideways and rotate up! Another option is to just mod the case so the side panel only has to rotate up, not pop out aswell, which is more like a real lambo and makes things easier. Now the torque required to rotate the door up is that high that you might have to use a high torque servo aswell as a carbon fibre panel! And in either case you'd have to add the cost of a servo controller. I think i've seen some that are usb controllable and others that you can just hook up to a parrallel port.
Think i might just doo the gull wing look for time being. have found the hinge for a lambo door but gettin it manufactured to such a small size aint gonna be cheap! just need to work out how to do it now!
I found something that might tickle your fancy. You can get from car/spare parts shops replacement pumps for the jets on your car bonnet. They come in two types, standard centrifugal(high volume, low pressure) or gear pumps (low volume much higher pressure, positive displacement) I would imagine it would be fairly easy to use the positive displacement pump with a light oil as a working fluid, and using maybe 1inch syringes, or something similar to make a basic hydraulics system. You could use limit switches to stop the pump from pushing the gull wing too far, and because its positive displacement AND reversible, as long as there is weight on the cylinder/syringe, it would reverse itself. On second thought, a syringe probably wouldnt be a good idea, but i am sure you could use something similar, maybe from a robotics place, or even a modified gas strut to do it, you know the struts that are used on boots and bonnets to slow them down when opening, and to hold them open. Gas Lift they are called in aus.
Now there's an idea!!! got some spare gas lift of my girlfriends old car.....infact i can most likly get alot of the old car...... how would i go about this tho as dont know much about pumps.....
Ahhh ambition to do the wing doors. I once had that, I just haven't done it yet. My best advise to you is to use the gas shocks from tailgates and hatchback cars. Then get a door latch that can be released with a button (or just make it manual) and there you go. That's the easy part. The hard part is finding a place to install it so it works properly and doesn't get in the way of other stuff. As for how to go about doing it, well, I really don't know. But then again, half the fun of modding is figuring it out for yourself and something as complex as that I wouldn't know until I could actually work with the case you are planning on doing this to. Savvy?
you could always use Pneumatics they are like hydraulics but use air insted, i think they would be cheaper and if anything goes wrong there isnt a load of liquid leaking all over ur case.
There is also the cheap and easy option, and that is to use arm power to lift the door You'd just need to hinge the top, your hand lifts the door from the bottom lip or a door handle, and a plastic clip/catch like what you see holding cupboard doors closed can hold the door in the upright posistion.
Yea thats the issue, the amount of stress on your case means you will have to build it out of steel, and reinforce it, and same for the side panel. Your case will end up weighing 50 kilos just to withstand the stress of a gas lift strut.
thanks for the imput guys........its a really tough desicion to make now. either stick at it nd end up having a case that weigh as much as my desk or leave it for my next scratch build project. i can see where every1 is coming from and although my case is large enough to to house all the components... its a tough call to make, but the i look at cases like the thermaltake sword and that has a similar style. i dont know cant decide. but will be starting my work log soon so keep an eye out for it.....Project Eleanor
You know there are actually some gas struts around that aren't that tough, they only push a couple of kilo or less. I saw one earlier today and this thread just popped in my head now! There are a few 4x4's with tail gates where the rear window can be opened separately, and even utes that have canopies where the winows lift. They use two small gas struts just to lift the glass window, so each strut only has to support 1 or 2 kg each. Using just one of these in a standard but sturdy case, attached high up on the center of a standard but strong case panel, near the pivot, would work pretty well i think.
The actuator you are looking for is like 15 USD Go to "http://www.mcmaster.com/" Search for "Gas Struts". They have everything you could possibly need for a mod project and more. I just made this profile to tell you guys about it, since it seems odd that the community of a website like this doesn't know where to look for the parts they need.
well been looking back into this now for my build and again im in a pickle...... gas struts even brand new are going to set me back around £60 for 2. or i could do the whole ebay thing and pick some up for £20 but with these i run the risk of ripping my case in 2 as they dont give the details of the force provided. anywords of advise? or should i just forget the gass springs?
A small linear actuator should do the job nicely for you. Those to are available from McMaster-Carr. You'll have to do a little work to rig the controls and power, but it will work. Perhaps some kind of USB controller. Hmmmm.... might have to look into this myself.
