Foot pedal for speed control on 200 and 400 series

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thebuildist United States of America
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Re: Foot pedal for speed control on 200 and 400 series

Post by thebuildist »

Ok, I understand. I wish I could see a factory loader in person and get a feel for it

It's been a little while now that I've seen a banana plate and I couldn't intuitively understand how it actually functions.

So last night I set out to draw a CAD representation of it in it's forward, neutral, and reverse settings, both when the pedal is retracted and the banana plate is at rest, and when the pedal is "floored" and the banana plate is fully engaged. By doing so I hoped to see how the travel spool linkage hole gets shifted/displaced in that process, and that it would reveal to me how the thing actually works.

So I looked at the illustrated parts breakdown that shows the banana plate and from there drew an approximate scale representation of it, and was able to note which holes and slots are connected to what.

And I did figure it out. But along the way I can see that when the travel lever is in the forward setting, the spool linkage gets displaced less than it is when the travel lever is in the reverse setting. What I'm perceiving from your reply is that in either setting it doesn't need much pedal travel to reach "full engagement." A short movement of the pedal is plenty for either direction, so any pedal movement after that is superfluous, and any forward/reverse difference can't be perceived.

So after all this, I guess I can satisfy myself that I've thoroughly thought it through, and if there are any big elegant design breakthroughs to be made, they're not going to be made by me :-)

Which loops us all the way back around to the beginning: Grummy's foot lever style, hopefully coupled with David Barkey's linkage style.

The only modification/improvement that I think I will do to my machine is that I will install a permanent hub where the fulcrum of the foot pedal is, and the pedal itself will be detachable, merely held on with a thumb screw. The pedal will be registered / locked in position by a couple of pins. So you can remove the thumb screw and just pull the foot pedal off, but more or less instantly slide it back on over the pins, and just put the thumb screw back in. The hub itself will always be there rotating in lockstep with the travel lever. But you can choose whether or not to have the pedal attached. And if you drilled a couple extra sets of holes, it would be easy to have the angle of the foot pedal adjustable to your preference as well.

While I'm at it, I'll probably make two or three different pedal styles in order to experiment with which one I like best. I'll make a heel/toe rocker style, and of course the toe-only style like Grummy's. And if I want to try the same kind of dual pedal setup as David has, it would be easily adapted to this hub system.

Bob
"Never be afraid to try something new. How hard can it be?"
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