Magnetic Linear Encoder v1.0
by MakerBot, published
Description
The board itself is going to be very awesome: Sporting the Austria Microsystems AS5306 chip which is a magnetic linear encoder. You put down a strip of adhesive backed magnet and then run this chip over it. It will tell you your exact position over the strip down to 15 microns. Hawt.
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Hi Hoeken, the problem with the accuracy of the mouse is a 'users' problem, not the design or working of it.When the mouse is clean, ball is in good shape, and surface is ok as well, mouse works fine.So, if you are able to replace the ball/axle combination with a more reliable 'driving mecanism' to drive these detection axels (like belts attached to your moving table for instance) your system will be very reliable and accurate.
After reading the datasheet it seems to work like this:
The magnetic strip has to be a multi-pole magenet.
Meaning NSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNS (check out photo)
The real magic is the resolution however. It says to .006 of an inch accuracy. But I assume that would mean you need to have a HIGH RES magnetic strip? Or am I inferring wrong here?
Ril3y
Michaels craft store has them for 2 bucks. I think I saw them at lowes too. That part is very easy to get.
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Cool that you're working on closed loop control for positioning. The AS5306 datasheet mentions it needs a multipole magnetic strip. Are these common? I was fantasizing about using an ADNS2610 or PAN3101 optical mouse sensor to experiment with positioning. These are very common, cheap, work without external reference and already have Arduino support.
yeah the magnet strips are easy to get and pretty cheap. the thing i like about magnetic is that its reliable. dust, debris, etc arent really a problem. also, the support for arduino is trival: its a quadrature encoder.
i hope that using a mouse sensor works because that would be cool, but i'm skeptical. after all, i've used mice before. how many times have i had to fight with a mouse to get it to go exactly where i want it? especially on dirty surface, the optical mice really start to suck. and you can bet that your makerbot will get dirty after a few months of use.
Where do you get the magnetic strips? Does Makerbot sell them?
Michaels craft store has them for 2 bucks. I think I saw them at lowes too. That part is very easy to get.
austria microsystems sells samples and there is a US supplier called arnold magnetics. this is just a test board right now, but once it moves into production we'll be stocking the magnet strips for sure.