I have finally gotten back to finishing up my power wrapper and am in need of a variable foot pedal. I changed from the original sewing machine motor to a 12V drill motor I pulled out of a Dewalt drill.

I gotta say that I cant remember who on here gave me the idea to use a drill motor but its an excellent idea. Mine came with a high and low gear selector which should make wrapping / drying easy. My only need right now is the foot pedal.

Any ideas where to come up with one



Thanks

I still use a sewing machine foot pedal with mine.

Well I thought I would be able to do the same thing however my foot pedal doesnt seem to work... almost seems like there is too much resistance.


It seems that once the contacts are closed it will run however there is no variable speed unless changed at the power source.

I would be careful using that motor for a drier. I dont think that motor is intended for continuous use for 5-6 hours.

I think he's going to use it for wrapping, not drying. At least if I read his original post correctly.

..................

I thought about that as well and was gonna post a question about that...

Has anyone been using the drill motors for dryers???? If not its no big deal as I have a rotissorie (sp) that I can use as well...


On another note I realized that im an idiot.. The foot pedal I was trying to use for built to run a 120V AC motor... the resistance is way off as compared to what I need to run a 12 V dc motor

I tried to run a 120v corded DeWalt drill in my lathe with a sewing machine foot pedal and it burned up the pedal. It worked for about a week or so of moderate use and then one day it just started smoking. I found out that the amperage was too high and the foot pedal couldn't handle it.

David Dosser
Coshocton, OH

Casey,
You have a 12 volt drill on which you are varying the speed.
To vary the speed on this 12 volt drill, you can use one of two different methods.


1. You can use a chopper power supply, where you vary the width of the pulses to supply current to the motor. Typically, these pulses are set up for about 5Khz. Then, the duty cycle is varied from 0-100%. At 0% duty cycle, the motor will be stopped, and at 100% will be running full speed.

2. The 2nd method is to vary the voltage to the drill. Vary the voltage from 0 to 12 volts. For either power wrapping or drying, the use of the variable voltage to the motor works very well. The motor has plenty of power to either power wrap or dry at low speed which equate to running only 2 or 3 volts to the drill.

So, to make your wrapper work well the easiest thing to use is a variable voltage power supply.

3. The 3rd thing that you can do is to remove the drill on and off trigger and associated electronics from the drill. Then fabricate a foot pedal which will mount the trigger and electronics and a foot actuated lever to depress the trigger as if you were using your finger to turn the drill off and on. Then, simply feed the foot pedal with a 12 volt plug in power supply that are readily available from many source for a few $$.

The use of the foot pedal to depress a finger style control is the exact system that "Line master" uses on their AC variable speed controls. In this case, Line master has supplied the molds and has molded the two part foot pedal to have a bottom piece, and a top piece with an arm on the top part of the pedal. There is a box in the lower part of the pedal that captures the inexpensive AC drill speed control and the top part of the pedal depresses it when you wish to vary the speed of the control.

You could likely use a foot pedal like this one ,to hold the finger trigger and electronics assembly from the 12 volt drill if you wanted to use it for a foot control.

------------
If you wanted to make your own variable power supply, you can pick up a power supply kit from an on line supplier. This kit provides a circuit board with components to vary the speed from 0-12 volts when supplied with voltage from an AC 12 volt transformer.
If you go shopping for such a kit, be sure to find a kit that varies the voltage from 0-12 volts not .3 volts to 12 volts. There are several kits on the market that use an Integrated circuit that contains a .3 volt offset from ground. So, for that style power supply, the lowest voltage is .3 volts and at .3 volts, the motor will slowly turn which is unacceptable.

When using this variable voltage power supply, you simply incorporate a variable resistor into a foot pedal that can vary the resistance of the resistor from minimum to maximum. However, to do this, you normally need to have a gear driven foot pedal.
A non gear driven foot pedal as is the case for a sewing machine foot pedal only has an angular swing of about 25 degrees. If you want to vary a resistance from 0-full resistance, you normally need a swing of 270 degrees. This is easily obtained when a gear and a rack is employed in the foot pedal.

A good source for this style foot pedal is a foot pedal that is used in rock bank "wah wah" pedals. Virtually all of this style pedals contain a rack that is hooked to the top part of the pedal, and a variable resistor that is mounted on the lower part of the pedal. The variable resistor contains a gear. Then, when the pedal is depressed, the rack comes down along the gear, rotating the variable resistor to allow for a full 270 degree resistor rotation.

By the way, I am a retired electrical engineer, so I have a background in tyis style design work.

If you would like more help or have more questions, just drop me an e-mail at

hflier@comcast.net

and I would be happy to help with any questions that you might have.

I have built many of these units for both power wrappers and dryers and they work very well indeed.

Be safe and happy wrapping.

Roger

Linemaster Variable speed AC foot control

[www.grainger.com]

For around $20 you can get a foot pedal designed to work with lathes, scroll saws and other power tools. Just plug in your rod wrapper and use it. I use mine on a ShopSmith to vary rotation speed without changing belt gear ratios.

Rick and Richard,
Both of your comments are just fine and work very well for 120V AC motors.

The original post is about controlling the speed of a 12 volt DC motor.

Neither of these pedals will work at all to control the speed of a motor like this with the following exception.

Depending on the power supply being used to supply the 12 volts to the motor - there is an outside chance that by varying the 120volts AC supply voltage to the DC power supply that you would be able to supply 0-12 volts to the motor.

But, if you tried using this pedal with the wrong type DC power supply, the only thing that would happen would be to cause a DC power supply failure.

Good wrapping.

Roger

p.s.
My earlier comment spoke of using a line master style AC foot control pedal shell to use as a container for a complete control from a DC drill motor finger control. If properly configured, the use of this line master shell could work to control the finger drill controller. One would still have to feed the pedal with a source of 12 volt DC power.

Yes my plan is to vary the voltage to the motor. I already have a variable DC power supply and foot pedal laying around from the sewing machine .So I think im gonna try to insert the trigger assembly from the drill inside of the foot pedal and use that to vary the voltage. Or at least thats the plan as of today... If that doesnt work I really like your idea about the "wah wah" pedals. That should be a fairly simple setup to modify.

Thanks

I've turned down several grips with my sewing machine foot pedal and cheapo 1/2in drill, however that is mostly at full speed. I can see how wrapping guides may cause more heat in the foot pedal though.

Casey,
Remember if you insert the drill complete trigger control assembly into the foot pedal, you will want to feed the control with the full 12 volt supply. The trigger will do the variable speed control in the exact same way that it down when the 12 volt battery is connected to the drills trigger control.

Of course if you find that this doesn't work for you, and if you have a variable speed power supply that is controlled by a variable resistor, you can always move the variable resistor from the power supply to the foot pedal, assuming that you can get the correct rotation range on the variable resistor.

Roger

Here is the Line master web site:

[www.linemaster.com]

This is the perfect foot control to use with a series wound ac/dc - (sewing machine) AC motors:

[www.linemaster.com]

This pedal listed above is the one that uses the typical ac variable speed drill motor trigger control that is placed into the foot pedal to control the speed of the motor. Excellent control.

-------------------
The variror line of pedals are my pedals of preference when I am using a DC motor where I need to vary the resistance of a variable resistor and have control over the entire 270 degrees of resistor rotation. These pedals contain gears to allow for a full 270 degree of resistor control for the typical 20 degrees of pedal movement. You can specify the resistor that is mounted in the pedal when you order it. You can also specify the addition of a micro switch to be added to the control.
When I use this pedal in my power wrappers, I use the micro switch that is turned on with the initial pedal movement to turn the ac voltage to the dc power supply. Then, as the pedal is depressed further, the variable resistor turns and the dc voltage on the motor begins to increase the thus turn the motor and the wrapper.

[www.linemaster.com]

All of the afore mentioned products are of very high industrial quality and are widely used around the world in heavy duty production plants. So, you can be assured that these pedals will hold up when used in a rod building application.

Good luck
Roger

Well good job me... I got the trigger assembly all nice and mounted inside the foot pedal... Everything worked perfectly except I goofed and put 20+ volts into the trigger which blew the voltage regulator chip... So now its pretty much just an on off switch LOL

dumb me

Casey,
Go to a pawn shop and pick up another variable speed drill for a few $$.

By the way, if you want a convenient reverse for your power wrapper, use a common 4-way switch from home depot or other home supply center.
A 4 way switch does a flip flop of the wires that come into the switch. So simply hook your motor supply wires on one side of the switch and hook your motor out wires on the other side of the switch to the power wrapper. When the wrapper is running, flip the switch and the wrapper will reverse. Flip it again and it will rotate back in the original direction.

Good luck
REW

p.s.
If you pick up an 18 or 24 volt variable speed drill and use that regulator, you won't have to worry about 20 volts blowing the chip on the trigger control.