Simon

Nah don't do that. I havent the time to look through all this but heres a BLDC motor driver chip. I don't think the one you're using is designed for BLDC? http://www.ti.com/product/drv8313

Maybe ESC from a radio control car rather than a plane, if they even have BLDE car motors? Maybe RC plane stuff doesn't work for low speed because a plane just doesn't need to. What use is a little propeller turning at 10-100 rpm? lol

You should be able to get away with not PWMing the motor and just switch each coil on and off in the right sequence? That will work fine in open loop providing the motor is big enough to keep up.

Nah, not being able to get low RPM with the ESC. It might start turning at 1000rpm rather than 1800 etc.

That would probably work but It wouldn't be enough. You would still have the same problem. I'd use that. This way you can get real slow speeds. It would probably be more accurate too.

Hmm, you might have to use 3 mosfets and drive it straight from the PIC.

Are you powering the motor from a separate source? Make it so the button only goes to half throttle and see what happens.

Oh ok, I don't know how I got that into my head. Should be some info floating round for those, might even be a servo.c file you can just copy.

You don't have to spend 65. I would buy an ESC also rather than trying to control the motor directly from the Arduino. With an ESC it's like one line of code. servo.write(angle from 0-180 which will relate to speed on a brushless). http://www.ebay.com/itm/Brushless-Motor-Outrunner-Motor-KV3500-for-RC-Airplane-Model-450-MH761-/360571781115?pt=Radio_Control_Parts_Accessories&hash=item53f3c0bffb http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-20A-Electronic-Speed-Controller-RC-ESC-For-Brushless-Motor-Part-DR-/300915836870?pt=Radio_Control_Parts_Accessories&hash=item460ffb47c6

Yes, similar to 3 phase in operation. They make heaps of DC motor control boards and I assumed they would also make heaps for brushless but it appears everyone just uses ESCs from RC planes and control it with the servo library in Arduino. edit What Ned said Both speedo and pulse from driveshaft are linear so it shouldn't be too hard to sort out a conversion in the code.

I would say desktop CD disk drive motor over a fan if you are still in junkyard mode.

Lol if it works, you won't want to run that stepper motor behind the dash. They hum, especially at high speed. It's not really the right motor. Brushless DC would be more suited. You can get heaps of break out motor controls boards / shields for the arduino. As there is no load on the motor you could just run it in a simple open loop and assume that the motor will keep up. If you think that's hard, most new vehicles run CAN network. All the information is sent down a single wire, rather than having 40 pin plugs. This means there is only like 3 wires that go into the instrument cluster.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hall-Effect-Hall-sensor-Proximity-Switch-NPN-3-wires-normally-open-magnet-NEW-/230979790688?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35c777e760

Not pre programmed, you still need to write the source code, but you can come up with pretty bang on PID values + simulation with math software like Matlab.

Epic! I'm thinking about doing this also, but would use an off the shelf $30 uC rather than build one from scratch lol.

I have a bare 1uz block you can measure and draw if you want.

Super sick. You gonna keep sunroof?

Some questions from this guy. Does it have any brand identification / numbers? Does it have a lid? Does it have a timer and a thermostat? Does it have a crucible in it? What's the max temp? Does it have any sort of power rating on it? What frequency? Is it water cooled? Could you get some more photos too? Cheers.

Hey man, I have a mate that will buy this. I'll ring him now and see.

He forgot to say it's like 400kw also lol Is fast. Sweet shed!

Oh I see, I read sender as sensor. I was lucky with mine, I just connected the wire and the temp gauge works haha. I guess Toyota didn't change the resistance in the temp transducer over that 13 year period.

There should be a temp switch in the radiator somewhere? It's just a switch, connect to relay and power fan from that.

Most of them are dirty old machines that are just NC but for a hundred grand or so you can have a nice CNC one. The 85K price on that business is basically hard assets only. The machine(s) and dies and a bit of stock. Have done some looking into it and there is a reason it costs so much to get bands made. You need to sink in substantial cash to get anything out.

You need a dirty big NC hydro machine to move thick metal. You can hand spin copper and like up to 1mm alloy if it's a high purity (soft as, vases, trumpets, kettles, light shades, pots etc). But wheels need to be like 5x that and aircraft grade alloy which is high tensile.

That is really good. I wish I could be bothered setting up a password on my router but the signal is so bad I doubt it gets to the street / next door.