marsh28 Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 My Halloween display includes an animatronic coffin that uses a 5 amp wiper motor. Could I control this motor with a LOR Channel as long as I left the channel at 100% on or will I fry the board? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimswinder Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 marsh28 wrote: My Halloween display includes an animatronic coffin that uses a 5 amp wiper motor. Could I control this motor with a LOR Channel as long as I left the channel at 100% on or will I fry the board?Where's "Dan The Wiper Motorman Man" when you need him???hold on marsh and the Wiper Motor Expert will be with you shortly.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilkie Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 marsh28 wrote: My Halloween display includes an animatronic coffin that uses a 5 amp wiper motor. Could I control this motor with a LOR Channel as long as I left the channel at 100% on or will I fry the board?Correct me if I'm wrong,Basic LOR controllers support resistive loads, and a motor is an inductive load, plus 5 amps is a lot for these output triacs(motor/inductive wise)Jeff would know this better, but I would slave it from a channel to another relay; either mechanical or a ssr, OROr perhaps one of the DIO cards slaved, or better yet, one of the servo boards on the webitehttp://www.lightorama.com/DigitalIO.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max-Paul Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 First a wiper motor is from a car, right? So, this would be a D.C. motor and I would assume that the controllers you all are talking about are the A.C. controllers. So, there is a problem. And I agree a inductive load directly connected to the controller is not my first or second choice of how to do this. So, if the motor is D.C., then a D.C. board will be needed. And then I would use a snubber diode to protect the output transistor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denise Brunner Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 The other problem is that the wiper motor is probably 12V and the regular LOR controllers are 110V, never mind the difference between AC and DC. Even if you used the controller to power a 110V to 12V transformer with a rectification circuit you should still put a relay in there to keep things isolated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denise Brunner Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 The other problem is that the wiper motor is probably 12V and the regular LOR controllers are 110V, never mind the difference between AC and DC. Even if you used the controller to power a 110V to 12V transformer with a rectification circuit you should still put a relay in there to keep things isolated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TJ Hvasta Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 Marsh, I used several wiper motors for the Black Pearl, one for the ships wheel and one for the gang-plank push.. both were just hard wired to old 5vdc router wallwarts.. each had 3a output.. I did not run them thru the LOR controller tho.Here's the gangplank guys:Here's the front of the ship and you can see the ships wheel and gangplank guys, two 12vdc wiper motors fed by the 5vdc router wallwarts: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Ancona Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 I'm here, Jim /George....Marsh,First off, why are you looking to use a controller? Is it to trigger the prop, reversing? i don't hook up any motors to an LOR board as noted above. Give a little more info and I'll see if we can help ya out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marsh28 Posted August 24, 2011 Author Share Posted August 24, 2011 I built a coffin last year that uses a wiper motor to raise and lower the lid. It looks pretty similar to the set up they have at the Haunted Mansion. I was interested in hooking the motor up to LOR so I could turn it off and on during certain parts of my show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 marsh28 wrote: I was interested in hooking the motor up to LOR so I could turn it off and on during certain parts of my show.Buy a 120V relay, which will cost you a couple of dollars at Radio Shack or many places online. A LOR controller can easily power a relay coil, as long as you don't dim or shimmer it. Then, use the contacts to control your motor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marsh28 Posted August 24, 2011 Author Share Posted August 24, 2011 Steven. So If I'm understanding you right, all I need to do is hook up the motor to a 120v relay and then hook the relay up to the controller? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Posted August 24, 2011 Share Posted August 24, 2011 marsh28 wrote: all I need to do is hook up the motor to a 120v relay and then hook the relay up to the controller?There have been reports from others on this forum that this works well.I use a slightly different configuration for my fog machine. I didn't have a 120V relay handy, so I used a 5V relay and a 5V wall wart, which is plugged into a LOR channel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marsh28 Posted August 24, 2011 Author Share Posted August 24, 2011 Here's a picture of the coffin for what its worth. Attached files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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