Ok, one thing about the design i didnt take into account was the fact that your pivot radius is twice that of the hole radius. When creating an 80mm iris, you have to have 160mm diameter to work with to let the leaves retract completely. I must say, its looking pretty top notch right now. I am designing the leaves for an 80 mm hole and then next going to try a 92mm (184mm outer diameter.) I have a Lian-Li PC -37 on the way and it has width of 210mm. This means I can feasibly create a 105mm hole in the top. I think I am going to stick with about 100 so I have space left for error. Should I also design a 60 or 30 mm for smaller spaces? Give me some feedback - I am going to post the leaf shape and all of the other pieces later once I get my scanner working and take some digitals of how it will look. Gotta love construction paper
Well I worked pretty hard today, made myself a prototype of the iris aparatus. I have a full guide on the geometry of it on my website www.elite-tech.org/articles/irismod/ The next update is going to be the materials. I am thinking some sort of thin ABS plastic or maybe something else. I really wish I knew someone who could CNC cut my leaves. Also in the next update would be information on the schematic for the proximity sensor version and maybe a temperature controlled version. Then I just need to build them and give some out. Thanks for the idea guys - if you have any more ideas for uses, I may be able to make more schematics.
Thank you kind sir. I also produced an image on how it may look on the top of a case. The colors are all off, but I think it shows the effect pretty well. Enjoy
I'm going to look into making one myself. Not sure if it will be the fold-over kind or not, but we'll see.
I was going almost insane last night, in my insomniatic haze wondering how the hell i was going to make the thing move. I was thinking how much servo's cost and then I would have to make a controller for it and the whole bit. Then I remembered about solenoids. I have no idea how they work, or if they would work well in this kind of setting. All I know is they are kinda like hydrolics in that they have a plunger type mechanism and when power is applied to the solenoid either it goes out or in *dont know* and when power is taken away it does the opposite. Now what if one of the leaf's stems were a little longer, could a solenoid not be hooked up parallel to a fan and once the fan is turned on via a fanbus the portal opens and the fan starts? I just dont know how solenoids work.... research time! EDIT: This is the solenoid I figured would work:: http://sales.goldmine-elec.com/prodinfo.asp?prodid=6791
A solenoid is another name for a coil of wire. The 'piston' on that little compontent you linked to would be attached to a magnet. The coil would be wound around that magnet and when current passes through the coil it will produce a magnetic field which will either attract or repel the piston. I've never seen that kind of component before so I don't know how preactical it would be for your iris.
Servos can be nicked from old remote control cars if you want to have a go with servos. I used some for one of my school projects -cLoWn
a solenoid wont have enough travel will it? i spent ages thinking about this when i first came up with the idea (plug plug ) thought that stepper motor would probably do it, very easy to get hold of (disk drives, printers, etc) can be controlled with any micro (or maybe even parallel port?) and a cheap darlington array IC (about £0.80 for an 8 bit one i think)
I got an explanation of linear solenoids from one of my friends who is an EE major... Linear solenoids are weak electromagnets which make a piston travel a certain distance. The travel distance of the one I linked to was 1 and 7/8 inches. With that, I can use right triangles to find the length of the stem needed for a plunger with that travel. I may have to order one or two to experiment with. Thanks for the help though everyone
My idea for the slots would be a little like this: A larger ring would fit on top of the assembly and engage the slots. I looked at string as well, but the distance betwen the actuation ponts changes with the position of the leaves. The slot lengh is equal to the arc length of the distance traveled by the actuation pins, that is to say that it is the lenght of the arc formed by the radius measured from the center of the iris to the actuating pin, and the angle the ring is rotated through to go from fully closed to fully opened. The ring can then be engaged in a number of ways from gears, to pullies to linear drive systems likea solenoid. I have no idea about the torques involved.
I used that for this version just because I had it around. Honestly in the next revision I am using 1/16 in plastic strips, 1/8 in wide with a whole at the top and bottom attaching to the leafs through axles. If you notice, you are using straight lines around a circle. This means you have a regular polygon and when it is rotated it will still be on the circle. Another one of those tricks I learned in geometry.
Oh yeah, and I decided to use a servo to power it, I figured out how to use a solenoid to do it, but after then I realized that using a solenoid meant it would be instant opened, and power would have to be given to the solenoid the whole time, AND it would make it really hard for people to have customized iris. There would be lots of math involved. The circuit is now in development and there is a temperature trigger. If the temperature gets over 35 C in the case, the iris opens and the fan turns on. Once the temp gets back down to 32 C, the iris closes and the fan turns off. There will also be a rotary switch to control where the temperature is recieved from. I am guessing with an 8 position rotary switch, one can get temperatures from 8 places. I am going to use three and they are going to be depths in the case. The first will be close to the top of the case, the second close to the middle, and the third near the bottom. These three temperatures will be hooked up to the PIC Microprocessor so that they will be displayed on an LCD display. The LCD would be a 16 character (maybe more) that will display the two temperatures. I would like to have it display the time and then when a button is pressed it would display the temperatures, and if that is not possible, I would like it to show the name of my rig, centered on the 16 char display. Somehow I would like to implement a "Manual Override" which would allow me to open the iris at any time I chose and turn on the fan. Most often to show it off . Thats about it for now, beta124
Simplest way to do that that I can think of would be to use a 4th position on the switch with a fixed resistor on it that simulates the value of the temperature sensor above the threshold temperature - ie the PIC would detect the temperature as being too high and open the iris and turn on the fan giving you bragging time. Really can't wait to see this finished. .AN^2 out
Electronics should be done the end of next week... I am not sure how long it will take my friend to develop the circuit and program the PIC - He has done some crazy projects really fast with PICs in the past. The mechanical end should be done this weekend if I can get the plastic stock. I am thinking I will just by 25 dollars worth over at www.modernplastics.com (i think thats the url). Alright I have to go to work.
I haven't quit on mine, but I have changed it dramatically. It now has a 12" opening with 8 leaves. The leaves are the quarter circle types. Here's the master die of the leaves.
I haven't quit either. I just moved over to another forum for a while. I will post an update here when I get a little bit farther.
