Yea, chain drive. You can find it in the dark. Just fallow the noise.
"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 07 Aug 2003 04:57:29 GMT, "Patrick Fischer"
wrote:

Friend bought a statue. It's about 12" in diameter and 24" tall. (Haven't
seen it yet) She has asked me to build a pedestal. Ok, that should be
kind
of fun.. the kicker is, she wants it to TURN,

You never build this sort of thing - buy it ready-made instead. Find
the right sort of scrapyard (big industrial machinery, scrap aircraft,
whatever), and start looking for something that's already a pedestal,
it just doesn't know it yet. Then you dress it with a casing over it.

Friend of mine has a swivel chair made from an ejector seat. The
swivel for that is an old front hub from a Saab (front wheel drive is
easier).

The advantage of a car hub is that you need to make a fairly tall
pedestal and have it stable. This either needs a long axle with a
bearing at top and bottom, or something very rigid mounted low down.
The wheel hub is easy and cheap to get, and rigid enough. You'll also
need plenty of ballast to stop it being knocked over, and the hub
would help there.

To power it, I'd use a chain drive, with a motor mounted off to one
side. Large chain sprockets with hollow centres come from pushbikes,
small sprockets are cheaply bought, with centres to fit standard motor
shafts. Chain pitch is pretty standard.

The motors I'd use (as I have them to hand already) are geared
synchronous motors that used to be in a coffee vending machine. One is
driving the bellows in the organ doorbell project:
http://codesmiths.com/shed/materials...organpipes.htm