7/30/15

Drew Henrie, Ben Haymore, and I (Miles Rennick) were trying to figure out a way to drive the giant polygon mirror. By blowing the polygon mirror with compressed air, we were able to measure the backchannel current with an oscilloscope. we found it to be 3V peak to peak, with one pair of wires 90 degrees out of phase with the other pair of wires. From that Drew was able to make an educated guess on what the setup for the motor for polygon mirror looked like. He concluded that even though it wasn't a stepper motor, we could drive it with a stepper motor driver. Luckily, Ben had a circuit board that he made from a robotics class that looks as if it will fulfill our needs.

Ben's circuit for the driver for the polygon mirror

The inputs will be driven by an arduino and a battery.