I wondering if anyone out there has come up with a homemade light mover or anything. I am just considering buying the driver motor and making my own track 180 dolla seems a bit to steep for me especially when they hardest part is just the motor looks like you could make the rail pretty easily at home. Is there anything special on the end of the rail that makes the motor return to the other side like a switch or anything.
Thanks
Peace And Pot
Green Guru

all it takes is nut to make it turn back, when it hits it it goes the other way.

yeah, im not sure how the nut thing works but most likely just a push button switch at both sides to flip the polarity. i've been toying with the idea awhile myself, servocity.com has some descent geared motor setups and two way speed controllers and basically anything you could need, if you wanted to go the simple more expensive way, past that, basic electronics and mechanical knowledge can get it done

Hmmmm interesting. I think I can make one of these pretty easily, now that I know it needs a switch at each end to turn it around, the only hard thing will be wiring the damn thing I HATE wiring. I will Def post some pictures of it when i get it going right now im working on my new grow area. I found an awesome idea how to stick up maylar and B&W Poly use 3M multipurpose spray adheasive it works so well only bad thing is once its on there it stays so trying to make it smooth is hard as hell. I wanted to build a light mover for my new room it is 8'x 4'x 8' i have one 1000 w hps and a 600w mh in there right now, to bad it is empty. soon it will be full of good clean MED MJ. Thanks for the info guys.
peace & pot
green guru

http://www.dharmanitech.com/2008/11/small-dc-motor-control-by-pwm-method.html

there's a small example of the logic involved and the motor controlling, my biggest hickup is matching the motor i need to what i need it for, any help anyone can offer on this? i think these things are horribly overpriced too, would be awesome if we could get a working tutorial put together for building one

more light area = more beautiful bud footage

Just don't model it after a hydrofarm light mover - things are a joke. Never saw one make it over 6mo use

are the hydrofarm movers the ones you find most places? I'll take a stab at saying they just overshoot their weight limit and burn the motors up, Ive heard bad things about their wire hanging also, or lack thereof maybe, could be a contributing factor to the motors being junked

imo lightrail is the dominant (and best) light mover out there.

I've seen a few broken suntwists, and tons of hydrofarms.

The hydrofarm is a clunky wierd chaindrive type thing, it's cheap, and a piece of crap.

lol, I thought about using the track from a garage door, not necessarily the whole frickin thing hah.

if you're interested in this though maramus, your first read will be what apparently hydrofarm should have read

http://www.gearseds.com/files/Lesson3_Mathematical%20Models%20of%20Motors.pdf

required torque and things like that

I was actually thinking about just buying the lightrail motor the 10 RPM and just building the components . such as the rail, that thing can be made for under 30 dollars just might need a welder, or some way to attach it. If we could get someone to give us some measurements on how wide the carrying rail is for the lightrail motor and then it would be pretty simple, and some bigger pictures of the motor, im having trouble finding something even close to similar. you could also im sure find a different motor from another location, I would just buy the biggest (within reason you don't need one that will carry 100lbs) motor they had so you would know you don't over exceed you weight limitations. 200 dollars is way to high for something that consists of a rail and a drive motor and a couple of reverse switches to make it go back and forth. I will keep looking but if all else fails I'm going to just buy the 10 RPM replacement motor for the lightrail 3.5, or has anyone heard about their duriability.