[Amps] W8ZR Autotune Amplifier Progress Report

[Jim]

Thanks Jim.

Good points on the gear reduction of the stepper for the band switch.

I happen to have a Ledex hooked to 86 switch. It was part of a marine or 
military automatic antenna tuner. The 86 has about 4 or 5 wafers on it. 
The solonoid is either 12 or 24 volts. Its been a while since I've 
looked at it, but I did use it for a remote balanced tuner with a single 
cap turned by a 12 volt DC gear reduction motor.
The 86 switch did not have stops, nor did it have a detent.


And yes, it only went one way, which is not a big deal. Seems to me it 
took less than 3-4 seconds to come back around full rotation. It had a 
small switch wafer on it to remove the voltage from the solenoid when it 
got to its wanted position.




Thanks
73
Jim W7RY

On 12/25/2020 3:32 PM, MU 4CX250B wrote:
> Good question, Jim.  Yes, you will definitely need to remove the
> detent assembly. You also will need to gear down the stepper motor a
> bit. Here’s why: Stepper motors are typically 1.8 degrees per step, or
> 200 steps for a full 360 degree revolution. Radio Switch Model 86
> bandswitches  typically have 30 degree indexing (12 steps for a full
> revolution.) A 3:1 reduction of the stepper shaft reduces the rotation
> to 1.8/3=0.6 degrees per step, or 50 steps per bandswitch position. In
> their MRI amplifiers, ETO used nylon gears with 32 teeth on the
> stepper shaft and a larger 96 tooth gear on the bandswitch shaft. This
> gear reduction not only made the bandswitch detent unnecessary, it
> also tripled the applied torque. Alternately, commercial gear-reduced
> stepper motors are available at very reasonable cost. I’ve even seen
> them with 30:1 reduction. Of course the bigger the gear reduction, the
> slower the shaft turns.  That’s not a big problem because you don’t
> the mechanical movement of switch to turn too quickly.
>
> Another option completely is to use a motorized rotary solenoid on the
> bandswitch, instead of a stepper motor.   Ledex has made these for
> years. Every pulse of the solenoid winding advances the shaft one
> position. A minor software tweak can implement this feature into the
> Propeller code. The only disadvantage of a rotary solenoid is that
> they turn clockwise only. That means that changing bands from, e.g.,
> 20m to 30m would require  12 pulses, while going from 30m to 20m would
> require only one pulse. Again, a minor software tweak.
> 73,
> Jim W8ZR
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Dec 25, 2020, at 1:47 PM, Jim <jimw7ry at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Question Jim..
>>
>> Do you (would you) remove the detent from a Radio Switch band switch? Or will a large enough stepper turn them with the detent in place?
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>> 73
>> Jim W7RY
>>
>>> On 12/19/2020 3:33 PM, Jim Garland wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>>      As you probably know, commercial automatic vacuum tube amplifiers have been available for more than decade, but they are expensive; their pricetag adds about $2000 to the cost of a comparable manual-tuned amplifier. For homebrewers, autotune capability is complex and difficult to duplicate, at least for most of us who are not professional design engineers with access to sophisticated workshops. For the past year, I've been working on an autotune control circuit intended to overcome these barriers. The purpose is to make it possible for amateurs with average technical skills to add autotune capability to almost any vacuum tube linear amplifier, whether homebrewed or commercial.
>>>      Here are the design goals for my controller:
>>>      (1) The performance should rival that of top-of-the-line commercial autotune amplifiers, (My benchmark is the Alpha 9500.)
>>>      (2) The controller should be easy to duplicate for amplifier builders with average homebrew experience.
>>>      (3) The controller should be affordable, costing no more than $100-$200.
>>>
>>> It has taken me a year to realize these objectives, most of which was spent learning to use an advanced, yet inexpensive, microcontroller called the Propeller PX32A. (The PX32A was designed in California by the Parallax Corporation, maker of the popular Basic Stamp controllers) The PX32A is a sophisticated device containing eight fully independent 32-bit microprocessors that share 31 read/write IO ports and a common memory for storing variables, computation results and data. These features make it possible to construct a complete amplifier autotune circuit on an uncrowded file card-sized  printed circuit board using ordinary through-hole components that can be wired up in an evening. The circuit board intelligently operates inexpensive stepper motors and motorized switches to adjust the tank circuits of almost any h.f. vacuum tube amplifier. An ordinary PC or laptop computer programs the device,  but once programmed, no external computer is required. Because of its power, the PX32A implements numerous advanced features while requiring only a handful of additional components.
>>>
>>> Although it has taken me almost a year to write and debug the program code for this controller, I 'm finally ready to move the project out of the breadboard stage. Here's a link to a YouTube video that demonstrates the controller's user features. (My eventual amplifier will use an 8877 triode in a conventional grounded grid circuit, but that's a topic for another day.) I apologize for the crudeness of the video, but hope you find it interesting and will let me know your comments and suggestions. (If the below link doesn't work, just Google "W8ZR YouTube Prototype Controller" )
>>>
>>>     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qDGoEElKcU
>>>
>>>     Thanks and 73,
>>>     Jim W8ZR
>>>
>>>
>>>
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