Hello everyone, this is my first post here at All About Circuits and its basically a cry for help! I have been reading up on electronics now for a couple of weeks having started with a very specific idea in mind. My background is that of a creative music technologist, I design software and musical instrument interfaces. I have had the idea of creating a drum kit that is played with solenoids triggered by complex MIDI patterns and knew that I would have to be at least a little acquainted with electronics to accomplish this! Luckily most of the hard work has been done for me in the form of the fantastic MIDItron interface which allows you to output a voltage in response to MIDI data through 1 of 20 output terminals. They even give a fairly simple schematic for wiring up solenoids in conjunction with a transistor wired up to the MIDItron terminal which I have included below:
Now I really am starting to put it all together in my head but just wanted to double check some stuff and ask a couple of questions before I go plugging my newly acquired rotary solenoid into the wall and cook myself! Please remember that I am incredibly new to electronics so please forgive my ignorance! Here goes:
1) The solenoid that I have acquired has the following spec: 24Vdc drawing 0.79 amps. Now this my noobiest of noob questions, but do I have to worry about amps when deciding on a power supply? I know that if I change the supply voltage the amps drawn by the solenoid change so keeping the power rating at 18.5 watts so I suspect that the amps will just take care of themselves, so should I just be looking at the voltage of my power supply?
2) The guys who gave me the solenoid said that I could increase the voltage to as much as 110Vdc and so achieve much, much more torque. However the duty cycle of the solenoid would be effected. Can anyone give me a little more info regarding duty cycle? Is it simply the amount of time that the solenoid can be switched on and that it has to be switched off in order to function correctly at any given voltage?
3) I don't think that I will need to operate the solenoid at 110Vdc but I would like the facility to vary the voltage I supply to the solenoid from say 24Vdc to 70Vdc at my leisure (perhaps with a rotary pot of some kind) so allowing me to control the solenoids torque and so allowing me to control the force it strikes the drum. Any suggestions as to how I might do this?
I plan to do allot more research before I go plugging anything in, so any ideas, suggestions or comments you might have would be so greatly appreciated! Many thanks.
Now I really am starting to put it all together in my head but just wanted to double check some stuff and ask a couple of questions before I go plugging my newly acquired rotary solenoid into the wall and cook myself! Please remember that I am incredibly new to electronics so please forgive my ignorance! Here goes:
1) The solenoid that I have acquired has the following spec: 24Vdc drawing 0.79 amps. Now this my noobiest of noob questions, but do I have to worry about amps when deciding on a power supply? I know that if I change the supply voltage the amps drawn by the solenoid change so keeping the power rating at 18.5 watts so I suspect that the amps will just take care of themselves, so should I just be looking at the voltage of my power supply?
2) The guys who gave me the solenoid said that I could increase the voltage to as much as 110Vdc and so achieve much, much more torque. However the duty cycle of the solenoid would be effected. Can anyone give me a little more info regarding duty cycle? Is it simply the amount of time that the solenoid can be switched on and that it has to be switched off in order to function correctly at any given voltage?
3) I don't think that I will need to operate the solenoid at 110Vdc but I would like the facility to vary the voltage I supply to the solenoid from say 24Vdc to 70Vdc at my leisure (perhaps with a rotary pot of some kind) so allowing me to control the solenoids torque and so allowing me to control the force it strikes the drum. Any suggestions as to how I might do this?
I plan to do allot more research before I go plugging anything in, so any ideas, suggestions or comments you might have would be so greatly appreciated! Many thanks.