The two actuators that I've built here are very slow yet very powerful they can lift several hundred kilograms off the ground they can be powered by 12 volts DC and they are way cheaper than commercial units and here we have two commercial linear actuators opening and closing this gate and as you can see they typically mimic the looks and functionality of hydraulic pistons .

Now my self-made actuators might look a little different but they still can serve a lot of the same purposes like for example in a robot where a linear movement for a manipulator or some kind of other mechanical contraption is needed so the motors that I ended up using for this project a windshield wiper motors and this is a windshield wiper assembly from an old Opel Khorasan and I bought this entire assembly for only 4 or 4 euros and 90 cents on ebay.

We have five wires on its connector two of them a green and a purple one coming out of the backside of the gearbox and these are just connected to wiper contacts or switches that we really don't need for this project at all three wires remain one of them is connected to the chassis ground and two of them actually lead inside the motor and can be used to run the motor at two different speeds and how that works well more about that in just a minute .

If you want to buy a used windshield wiper motor I recommend to look for one that already comes with this entire assembly here because then you already have the parts that connect to the kind of weird little rod that is coming out of the gearbox and we take off an m8 nut and at least in Germany that's almost always an m8 nut and a lock washer and then we have the little crank that sits on the tapered part of this rod and by unscrewing three m6 bolts.

You can then remove the motor from the rest of the assembly and here we have a close-up of the shaft coming out of that gearbox its tip is just a metric m8 thread but after that or under that we have a taper that is also splined and that little crank piece fits exactly on that taper end on those splines and once the lock washer and the nut are fastened ...

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Build Powerful Linear Actuators from Windshield Wiper Motors and Car Jacks

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