Automatically actuated grill block - Mk3

[Daox]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

I like the balanced vane blade. Would a worm gear and a small (stepper?) motor work?

Thanks Neil.

I'm sure we could make this work with a small stepper motor.

[teoman]

You could mount the servo on to the flap


Stepper will also work but servo is better suited for the application i think. It is absolute position control vs relative. With the stepper you either need a limit switch or you need to force stepper several steps over open an close, making it skip steps so that you get an absolute position reference.

[Daox]

Originally Posted by teoman

You could mount the servo on to the flap

Haha, thats pretty clever!

[Daox]

Alright, I got it all mounted and on the car last night. Unfortunately it rained and that slowed me up a bit.

Time for pics!


Traced the grill block on to the coroplast. I cut it with an exacto blade after that, and drilled holes in the coroplast.





Cut and mounted with screws. Fit great. It did require a bit of notching around the servo and its arm.





Here is the back side with servo mounted.





Soldered up the wire that will run to the arduino in the cabin. I used a 4 conductor telephone wire.





I could use a good way of making this connection water tight... Suggestions welcome!





After that it was a matter of waiting for the rain to stop and going and bolting it on. It really fit nice.





Once its painted I don't even think it'll be real noticeable at all.





The white is paper that stuck to it when I superglued it together. It will be cleaned up when I go to paint it.





View from the front of the car. Its a bit behind the license plate, but I can't really shift it any further to the right due to the wood blocks needing space.

[BamZipPow]

Dielectric grease goes along ways at waterproofing connectors. Add some shring tubing over it and yer good to go.

[Veen]

Doax,

Do you have the design files?

I'd like to take a shot at designing the parts for laser cut but keep compatible with your design.

It'd be nice to have a sort of "standard" for this that could be repeated easily.

[Daox]

I did get the grill block partially wired and powered by the car. There are still some wiring tweaks to make. Its not hooked up to the coolant sensor yet, so I'm just running the demo sweep program.

I noticed on the trip in today that I must have pulled 12V power from the wrong pin because I have some funky IMA error code (P1647). I'll have to get 12V switched from somewhere else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ELT...ature=youtu.be

[Daox]

Originally Posted by Veen

Doax,

Do you have the design files?

I'd like to take a shot at designing the parts for laser cut but keep compatible with your design.

It'd be nice to have a sort of "standard" for this that could be repeated easily.

I'll PM you about it. I don't think the design can easily be laser cut. The lines you see separating the parts are not vertical, they have internal geometry that you don't see that centers the pieces as they snap together. This vastly increases the rigidity when things are put together.

[Daox]

Last night I got it all wired up. I had to make two connections to the ECU. One was for the coolant temperature signal, the other for power. I was able to find a 5V power pin on the ECU, so I used that. That'll reduce losses with power regulation.





So, the arduino sits in the glove box for now. I didn't get a chance to upload the program to it and try it on the trip in today. Plus, I still have a few programming tweaks to make. I'll post the code later today hopefully.

[gone-ot]

Is it "slap-bang" (OPEN/SHUT) or proportional (variable) opening?