Winch winding adjustment

[Old Forester]

Does anyone know of an electric or other attachment that can adjust or help adjust the up/down vertical height for the Lucas saw mill.  Recently had shoulder problems and and having trouble turning the winch crank, particularly in raisin the saw up.

[Don P]

A man after my own heart.. or shoulders. Roll the carriage back and forth for one. If sawing with a partner, roll the carriage to their end. I've been wondering about a truck tarp motor.

[scsmith42]

Peterson uses a truck tarp motor.  Works great.  Let me know if you’d like more details and I’ll post pix.

[doc henderson]

I use one on my conveyor for the log splitter.  going on 5 years or so.  you can pick the gear reduction and therefor the speed and torque.  they are dc so maybe could get variable speed.



 

 

 

[Don P]

Scott, pics would be awesome. I didn't know it was plowed ground.

[Old Forester]

Not real familiar with a truck tarp motor, seen them go down the road on grain trucks, but never paid much attention.  Any help/insights would be appreciated.  Thanks

[scsmith42]

Here is one of the more powerful truck tarp motors.

https://www.surpluscenter.com/Electric-Motors/DC-Gearmotors/DC-Gearmotors/40-RPM-12-Volt-DC-900-Watt-RA-Gearmotor-Buyers-Products-5541895-5-1720.axd

Cover for it.

https://www.surpluscenter.com/Electric-Motors/DC-Gearmotors/DC-Gearmotors/Replacement-Cover-For-Tarp-Gearmotor-Buyers-Products-5541005-5-1721.axd

You’ll need chain sprockets to run from the motor to a gear reduction.  The one on my Peterson is 4:1 reduction (12 tooth drive sprocket, 48 tooth sprocket for the output.

Here are some pix of the Peterson setup.  First up is the truck tarp motor as viewed from the operators station.



 

Next view is the tarp motor from the opposite side



 

This is the view looking down of the gear reduction that is fed from the output of the truck tarp motor.  The ratio is 4:1



 

And here is the view of the gear reduction looking from the bottom up.



 

Below is a manual crank style Peterson lift system.  It appears to me that all they did was remove the manual crank handle and replace it with a double chain drive sprocket.  The ratio between the truck tarp motor output shaft and the manual crank input shaft is 1:1.

The 4:1 ratio that i mentioned above is part of their manual crank system.  Presumably the Lucas would have a similar ratio built in so it should be pretty easy to add a truck tarp motor and have the ratio’s be correct.



 

[Old Forester]

Thanks for all the information and input.  It looks like the  truck tarp motor is certainly the starting place for building a lift system.  Help is really appreciated.

[blackhawk]

Scott - Does the Peterson motor have a feedback device that accurately sets the height based on an input?  Or is it just off or on with a button and you still eyeball the gauge until you hit the mark?

[fluidpowerpro]

It is also possible to modify an ATV winch drum to add a sprocket to it. You would want to use it with a pwm drive to get variable speed 

 

 

[scsmith42]

Scott - Does the Peterson motor have a feedback device that accurately sets the height based on an input?  Or is it just off or on with a button and you still eyeball the gauge until you hit the mark?

No feedback device - just operator skill.  It’s not hard to maintain 1/8” or less tolerance though.

[Don P]

I've been off and on playing with an idea and will probably end up needing someone smarter than me. I'm hoping to get a DRO (digital readout) on each post that I can glance at. There is magnetic tape that could go on the post, a digital caliper type reader and that would be one way. Another is a rotary encoder that sends blips to an arduino to count as the knob on the encoder turns, just mount it right on the end of a shaft and have the chip do a little math to convert degrees of rotation to inches of height raised. From there, if I could toggle tarp motors accurately from the operators station, productivity would go way up. I'm not turning logs like on the circle mill, but still I'm done walking that donkey path after about 4 hours. Cutting down on walking/jumping the rail for adjusting height would keep us sawing longer.

[chep]

I'm watching this thread for sure. That is the most time consuming part of running a lucas alone is raising and lowering the dang carriage.  I figure I could almost double production if that trip to the far end was eliminated.  I've started looking at Peterson mills lately...pretty envious

[Don P]

I think I'll try one of these encoders. Rather than trying to count pulses of a rotary switch that tends to "bounce", this encoder sends a different signal for each position it can be in per revolution... That sounds like the ticket for accurate readout.

[Don P]

The encoder is here and I've been crashing so far. It is really an ACE128, Absolute Contacting Encoder with 128 positions in the circle. If you order one, I think I'll get one with an IC2 backpack next time, it uses 2 pins on the Arduino vs 9 and has a memory when shut off.
High Resolution Absolute Encoder - Arduino & Pi | Hackaday.io

Instructions | High Resolution Absolute Encoder - Arduino & Pi | Hackaday.io

I'm getting error messages when trying to compile, and I'm really above my pay grade with coding but I think this will get it;

Instructions | High Resolution Absolute Encoder - Arduino & Pi | Hackaday.io

Hmm, throwing the same link, hit the description tab first for an overview and then instructions for where I think the code changes need to be.

But, mamma needs a new pair of shoes, off to hand crank and shout.

[Don P]

Those instructions did work for getting the ACE talking to the Arduino. So this is an absolute encoder vs an incremental encoder which is putting out pulses and direction but has to be "debounced" in the software, it gets lost. This one is giving a different address for each of 128 positions around a circle, it knows where it is absolutely.We measured travel per revolution of the upper axle on the Lucas and divided by 128 and came up with .0412" of vertical travel per click of the encoder

That's the Bourns encoder on the breadboard.



 

The sketch;

#include <LiquidCrystal_I2C.h>
LiquidCrystal_I2C lcd(0x27, 16, 2);

#include <ACE128.h>
#include <ACE128map12345678.h>
ACE128 myACE(2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, (uint8_t*)encoderMap_12345678);
int16_t multiturn_encoder_value;
 
void setup () {
myACE.begin();
// Initialize LCD
  lcd.init();
  lcd.backlight();
}
void loop() {
multiturn_encoder_value = myACE.mpos();

// Display the encoder multiturn position on LCD

lcd.setCursor(0, 0);
  lcd.print("Inches Moved");
  lcd.setCursor(0, 1);
  lcd.print(multiturn_encoder_value * .04121);
  lcd.print("        ");  
}

The encoder is on pins 2-9 + gnd on the digital side of the Uno board. The LCD is on pins A4-A5, power and ground on the analog side.