Linear Motor and Electronics for Bump Shaker Table 

Thanks, James. I'm working on a video about the microprocessor right now. Yes, it's quite a useful device. -- Dave

Best of luck with your shaker. I'll be making a couple more videos on the micro and electronics. Perhaps they will help. -- Dave

Thanks, Alex!

It's not a simple project, but I'm sure you'll make it work. One of the mistakes I make time and again is not making the base sturdy enough. I would consider adding rocks/sand/gravel as inertial mass to the base. The acceleration of the bump can easily be lost in the motion of the base. -- Dave

​@@orophilia I'll let you know if I can get it to work. After some research, i'm going to try going with an Arduino UNO R4, BTS7960 and keep everything 24v.

@@sparks4025 Sounds good. Are you going to add a display? If so, consider the Lilygo T-Display-S3 board. -- Dave

​@@orophilia Thanks for the recommendation, I will check into that display.

I would say that you can build the table for $350 here in the US, maybe less. It will depend on how fancy you get with connectors and other stuff. Magnets are 50, magnet wire is 15, electronics parts are about 85, connectors are 20, probably 80 or 100 for the plywood, pump is 15. Hardwood another 30. You'll need buckets, some PVC pipe and fittings, a large tote, etc. Say another 80 for miscellaneous stuff. So, if you're really careful, it can be done. I'm working on the code. It will be available for free. -- Dave

Wow that is awesome! Thank you very much. I was about to spend about the same amount on a small manufactured millet table. I’m going to try to open up the sketchup file and see if I can put together a part list good lumber is hard to get around here. Thank you very much for all the work. God bless!

When the table deaccelerates due to the bump the gold particles travel a bit farther than the lighter particles because they have more inertia. It's more complicated than that because it's really the ratio of inertia to surface area, but that's a long discussion. Thanks for the comment. -- Dave

@@orophilia Thank you ..Kind regards.. Michael

Hi Lars. I started out with the Arduino Uno and Nano and I still use the Arduino IDE for writing the code. The ESP32 series of micros has a lot of features that I like. -- Dave

That's right. I use the other one for another purpose. It drives my little heater for warming test tubes. -- Cheers, Dave

The two ends of the coil are twisted together to keep the coil from unwrapping. There is no other reason. The black acrylic pieces are used to make a coil form, an easy way to wind the wire into a coil shape. -- Dave

I'm going to make a video on the microcontroller. I'll include the code at that time. -- Dave

Thank you. Hopefully soon :) I am in the middle of building your shaker table and am confused about the micro controller.@@orophilia

@@bradysbackyardfarm9836 Yeah, it's one of the difficult parts of the project. I'll try to make the video clear. I have another set of parts for the electronics coming this weekend and I'll build up another controller from scratch. It will include a virgin micro and code for it. -- Dave

Thank you! That will be very helpful.@@orophilia

That's a very good question about the motor voltage. To generate mechanical power in a motor we need electrical power going in. The coil has resistance, so the total power is limited by V^2/R. To get more power we can either increase the voltage or lower the resistance. In theory, I could have wound the coil with 1/4 of the resistance and used 12V. In practice this leads to larger diameter wire, which is more difficult to wind, or it leads to some other issue. So, you're absolutely right, this motor could be made to run from 12V. However, we would probably want a voltage regulator anyway since we don't want the input voltage to affect the force on the table. There are several ways to solve the problem and I consider this a decent one. Yes, I could have used a linear regulator to make 5V, but the price of the switcher is the same or cheaper, and now I don't have to worry about the thermal dissipation in the regulator.

@@orophilia Obviously you have based your work on all options and not making things complicated because you can.