This is an update on my latest project, a fully functional airsoft sentry gun!
Click here and take a look at the detailed pictures,plans and videos!
Let's start with the basic material. All parts were cut out of 2 or 3 mm PMMA Acrylic glass. I used Inkscape to generate the gears and since the lasercutter I could use ran on Adobe Illustrator, I had to design all the parts with AI. Here you can see the lasercutter cutting some of my parts:
If you are interested in the plans of all the parts, consider making a small donation here and I'll be happy to send you all of my plans via e-mail!
Here are all the parts right before assembly - it was my first try at lasercutting so some parts got a little bit dirty due to not cutting with the protective foil still attached. Furthermore while cutting Acrylic one should avoid sharp edges and rather cut round corners!
Above you can see the BB feeder's parts. The most difficult task here was designing a working "BB feeder gear".
The parts were glued together with hot glue. Next time I will include holes for assembly screws. The motor you can see here is a cheap metal geared DC motor.
The gears were cut with a slot so they fit right onto the motor's axis.
These two are the baseplate and the rotation platform gear.
You will notice a square piece of acrylic in the middle of the disk. I installed a piece of acrylic tubing in order to be able to guide cables through the middle while rotating around more than 360°.
These are the parts which make up the tilt mechanism. Here from a different angle:
The stabilizers fit right onto the big plate using pre cut slots. The next pictures show baseplate and tilt mechanism together:
Now I need your help. I am going to use an Arduino Mega and some motorshields for controlling the turret. I have no incremental sensors so far - please send me an e-mail or leave a comment with a link to what sensors I should use. I dont want to use optical encoders, I'd prefer some variable resistors or some kind of similar sensors!
The project is not yet finished: Lasers, infrared Leds and a camera will be added. Motion tracking and remote control will be the final task. Watch the video below for some explanation and demonstration.