What I Fixed Today (WIFT#4)

Speed Control Pedal for a Pottery Wheel

A while back I received a donation of a really cool motorized pottery wheel for the proposed makerspace here in the Koots.

Unfortunately the controller was missing a working speed control and had no foot pedal.

The only pedal I could find was recovered from recycled stuff although it only had an ON/OFF reed switch. There appeared to be enough space below the pedal base to install a potentiometer and with a bit of ingenious actuator design, a 3D printed arm was constructed to ride on a suitably sized ‘pop-rivet’ mounted into a convenient upper endstop of the pedal.

Next to use an Arduino to convert the 30 degree pot rotation to a suitable 0 to 100% PWM signal to control the existing 90 Volt DC motor.

Watch the short video below