lazy susan

6 Articles

Building A Rotating Display Plate From A Lazy Susan

September 14, 2023 by 9 Comments

A rotating table is a super nifty tool for all kinds of photography and videography purposes. [Handy Bear] built a super simple example using some parts from IKEA.

The build starts with a Snudda, which is IKEA’s version of a Lazy Susan. It’s fitted with a 3D-printed gear to allow it to be easily driven. The platter is then fitted to a 3D printed base, which also contains the drive electronics, and driven by a small brushed DC gear motor. An off-the-shelf speed controller was employed to allow the speed of the platter to be varied as required.

[Handy Bear] does a good job of explaining how to build the project properly while avoiding the usual pitfalls. In particular, he demonstrates how to fit the gear to the platter without getting it off-axis. We also appreciate a design that can be built virtually anywhere thanks to using commonly-available parts.

We’ve featured other rotating tables before, like this open-ended design that was built on a much larger scale. Video after the break.

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You Can Build Your Own Sushi Train

March 11, 2022 by 19 Comments

According to [Garage Avenger], in Norwegian culture it’s considered impolite to ask for things to be passed across a dinner table, so much standing and reaching is the course of the day. To assist in reducing the effort required, he set about building his own sushi train device to solve the problem, giving equal condiment access to all!

The system is capable of taking plenty of weight from heavy dinner bowls, altogether quite different than relatively-light sushi dishes on plastic plates.

The system is actually relatively simple, relying on a Wemos D1 Mini controlled by a Blynk app to run the show. Mechanically, a large drive gears is turned by a stepper motor to drive the wooden conveyor chain that actually makes up the “sushi train.” The chain links ride on a bed of Norwegian one krone coins acting as rollers.

The result is a working table-sized sushi train that really does carry plates around well. It didn’t stop people leaning over [Garage Avenger] at the dinner table, but it makes a great centerpiece on the dinner table for sharing dishes like tacos.

We’ve seen similar table technology, the Lazy Susan, around these parts before. Video after the break.
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This DIY Turntable Just Got Freaky Fresh

November 24, 2017 by 4 Comments

Photography turntables are made for both the precise and lazy. Whether you are concerned about the precision of consistent angles during a photo shoot or you simply do not want to stand there rotating a plate after every picture — yes, it does get old — a lazy susan style automatic photography turntable is the ticket. This automatic 360° design made over at circuito.io satisfies both of these needs in an understated package. 

The parts required to make this DIY weekend project are about as minimal as they get. An Arduino Uno controls it all with a rotary encoder for input and a character LCD to display settings. The turntable moves using a stepper motor and an EasyDriver. It even takes care of controlling the camera using an IR LED.

The biggest obstruction most likely to arise is creating the actual laser cut casing itself. The circuito team avoided this difficulty by using Pololu‘s online custom laser cutting service for the 4 necessary laser cut parts. After all of the components have been brought together, all that is left to do is Avengers assemble. They provide step by step instructions for this process in such a straightforward way that you could probably put this sucker together blindfolded.

We have seen some other inspired photography turntables on Hackaday before. [NotionSunday] created a true turntable hack based off of the eject mechanism of an old DVD-ROM drive. With the whole thing spinning on the head assembly of a VCR, this is the epitome of letting nothing go to waste. We also displayed another very similar Arduino Uno controlled turntable created 2 years ago by [Tiffany Tseng]. There is even a non-electronic version out there of a DIY 360° photography turntable that only uses a lazy susan and tape measure. All of these photography turntable hacks do the job wonderfully, but there was something that we liked about the clean feel of this one. All of the necessary code for this project has been provided over at GitHub. What is your favorite photography turntable?

Hacked Turntable Rotates Humans For 3D Scanning

February 25, 2016 by 12 Comments

If you are from the 70’s, you’ll probably remember the Disco Body Shaper or the Aerobic Body Shaper exerciser devices that were the rage of the day. Basically, Lazy Susan turntables on which humans could stand and twist away to burn fat. The results were suspect, but [Daniel Kucera] thought one of them would be ideal in 2016 to build a heavy-duty turntable to allow full body scanning.

He had already tried a few other ideas and failed, so it was worth giving this a shot, since it cost just 10 bucks to buy one. The plan was to use a motor to provide friction drive along the circumference of the turntable platform. For this, he used a high torque motor with a gear on the output shaft. From the looks of it, he attached a Meccano plate to the base, and mounted the motor to this plate. A large spring keeps the motor pressed against the rim of the turntable. A strip of rubber scavenged from a bicycle tube was glued along the side of the turntable to provide some friction to the gear drive. The turntable is placed on two thick pieces of foam, to provide clearance for the motor. We aren’t sure if a toothed gear is the best choice to drive this thing, but a hacker’s gotta use what he’s got. He’s clocking 190 seconds for a full rotation, but he still hasn’t posted any scan results from the Android scanner software that he is working on. This one, for sure, doesn’t qualify for a “it’s not a hack” comment.

Simple Telepresence Hack Lets Remote User Rotate This Laptop

November 17, 2011 by 8 Comments

[Kris] wanted to make the telecommuting employees at his office feel a little more in control of their virtual presence in the office. He gave them a way to look around without needing to go into full-blown robotics. This laptop stand has a Lazy Susan connected to a servo motor to give the user control of where the computer is pointed.

We’ve certainly seen our share of really complicated surrogate builds like this balancing robot. There have been simpler options too, such as this smartphone-carrying motorized base. But when you get right down to it, the ability to pan the camera is probably good enough for most situations. [Kris’] solution can be built in an afternoon, using simple materials. The box is made out of MDF with a base for the laptop connected by the ball-bearing hardware that supports the weight and makes sure the servo is able spin it freely. It is driven by an Arduino which connects to the computer via USB; making it easy to control remotely. Check out a quick clip of the laptop going round and round after the break.

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Arduino Powered Singing Table

September 30, 2009 by 23 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4PSgXDp64]

This musical Lazy Susan, or “Crazy Adam” was brought to us by students from MIT.  It basically plays [Soul II Soul]’s “Back to Life”  as it turns.  In their words: “Through the interaction with the Singing Lazy Susan, we found the eating patterns and behaviors unique to each person, which reflect our personalities and interests. The dining experience expands to a new domain.”  Are we the only ones who think this is silly? Not only is an Arduino overkill for this, how does this help reflect our personalities and interests? We know, someone will say that art doesn’t need to make sense, but  this would just get annoying really fast. Good job coming up with an idea and making it happen. Please don’t bring that to our next office party. It is also worth noting that musical Lazy Susans aren’t exactly a new idea.