We have expanded our selection of Glideforce linear actuators from Concentric International to include their industrial-duty and medium duty series as steps up in power from their light-duty series that we have been offering for many years now.

The medium-duty actuators are available in five different stroke lengths ranging from 4″ to 12″ and with or without feedback potentiometers, and they have a dynamic load rating of 225 lb, which means they can handle twice the load of their light-duty counterparts:

Glideforce Medium-Duty (MD) series of linear actuators with feedback.

Glideforce Medium-Duty (MD) series of linear actuators without feedback.

The industrial-duty actuators are real monsters compared to the medium-duty and light-duty units. The versions with an acme screw drive can handle dynamic loads up to 550 lb, and the versions with a ball screw drive (which is much more efficient than an acme screw) can handle dynamic loads up to a 1000 lb. Each drive option is available in six different stroke lengths ranging from 4″ to 24″ and with or without feedback potentiometers:

The following lets you compare all of our Glideforce linear actuator options:

Note that we are currently out of stock of many of the industrial-duty versions, but we will be getting more as Concentric makes them available. For units where the expected lead time is several months, we have disabled backorders; please contact us if you are interested in placing an order now for one of those units.

To see all of our linear actuators, visit our linear actuator category.

Since my last post about free shipping in the USA, we expanded the program to include orders consisting of $40 or more in free add-on shipping items. And today, we added almost 300 different metal gearmotors to our selection of products that ship for free in the USA. (Don’t worry, we don’t pile up actual good production motors like we did in that picture; those were returned by an infamous, once-skyrocketing startup.)

We will be closed for Christmas on Monday, December 25 and for New Year’s Day on Monday, January 1. Orders placed after 2 PM Pacific Time on December 22nd or 29th will be shipped on the following Tuesdays.

And last call for our Christmas sale — only about 15 hours to go!

Merry Christmas and happy New Year!

Are you attending CES or in Las Vegas on Wednesday, January 10th? You can join Pololu and LVBots any time from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. for CES Open House 2018! Like last year, LVBots members will be showcasing their robotics and electronics creations, Pololu will be giving tours of our manufacturing and other operations, and you can present your company or your projects. We will provide food. Registration and other details are on the LVBots Meetup page.

If you missed our Black Friday sale or realize you didn’t quite get everything you wanted, don’t fret: we have all active Pololu-brand and PCX products on sale for 12% off, and we are offering 20% off twelve broad categories of our products. The sale runs through noon PST on Friday, December 22, but be careful to order early for delivery before Christmas. Save on your Christmas shopping, or stock up now on robot parts for the new year. Check out the sale page for all the discounts and coupon codes. Merry Christmas!

I am excited to announce our first voltage regulators with multi-turn trimmer potentiometers! I have wanted to add multi-turn pots to our products for a long time, but the problem has been that they are really expensive. They also tend to be quite big, at least compared to many of our boards, which we try to keep compact, and the smaller, surface-mounted ones are especially expensive. My latest round of looking for lower-cost options did not pan out, but I decided to just give it a try with the expensive parts.

The new S9V11x regulators that feature these potentiometers are buck-boost regulators that can output a voltage that is lower, the same, or higher than the input voltage. There are also versions with a multi-turn pot for adjusting the undervoltage cutoff threshold, so that if you use these with batteries, you can prevent overdischarging them. With twelve turns of adjustment available, it’s much easier to precisely set the voltages on the modules than with the single-turn potentiometers we have used on other adjustable regulators.

The output and cutoff multi-turn adjustment potentiometers on the S9V11x voltage regulators.

While I have been talking mostly about the potentiometers, the main regulator is pretty magical, too, giving you quite a bit of power over a broad operating input range in a small size.

Typical maximum continuous output current of Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator S9V11x

Our stock products are available in several combinations of adjustable and fixed output voltage and cutoff. If you have a higher-volume application, we can make them with fixed voltages wherever you need them. You could initially prototype your design with the adjustable version and then get fixed ones made once you know exactly what voltage you need.

Regulator		Input (V)	Output (V)	Low-voltage cutoff	Size	Price
	#2868 S9V11MACMA	2* – 16	2.5 – 9 (fine-adjust)	fine-adjust	0.50″ × 0.60″ × 0.25″	$13.95
	#2869 S9V11MA		2.5 – 9 (fine-adjust)	–		$10.95
	#2870 S9V11F5S6CMA		5 (6 V selectable)	fine-adjust		$10.95
	#2871 S9V11F3S5CMA		3.3 (5 V selectable)	fine-adjust		$10.95
	#2872 S9V11F3S5		3.3 (5 V selectable)	–	0.50″ × 0.60″ × 0.17″	$7.95
	#2873 S9V11F3S5C3		3.3 (5 V selectable)	3 V (fixed)		$7.95
	#2836 S9V11F5		5	–	0.30″ × 0.45″ × 0.17″	$8.95
* The regulator has a minimum start-up voltage of 3 V, but it can operate down to 2 V after startup. It is disabled when the input voltage is below the low-voltage cutoff.

I am very interested to see what people think of the multi-turn adjustment feature. If these new regulators sell decently or customers ask for it, we will add the multi-turn potentiometers to our other regulator offerings. Is the extra expense worth it? Or do you know of a good, low-cost, multi-turn potentiometer we could consider for future products like this?

Related products

	2.5-9V Fine-Adjust Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator w/ Adjustable Low-Voltage Cutoff S9V11MACMA
	2.5-9V Fine-Adjust Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator S9V11MA
	5V Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator w/ Adjustable Low-Voltage Cutoff S9V11F5S6CMA
	3.3V Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator w/ Adjustable Low-Voltage Cutoff S9V11F3S5CMA
	3.3V Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator S9V11F3S5
	3.3V Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator w/ Fixed 3V Low-Voltage Cutoff S9V11F3S5C3
	5V Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator S9V11F5

20D mm metal gearmotor CB with long-life carbon brushes.

20D mm metal gearmotor CB with long-life carbon brushes and an extended motor shaft.

Magnetic Encoder Kit for 20D mm Metal Gearmotors assembled on a 20D mm metal gearmotor with extended motor shaft.

Last month when we introduced versions of our 20D gearmotors with long-life carbon brushes, we mentioned units with extended motor shafts were in the works. Well, I’m happy to announce that option is now available for both the 12V CB and 6V CB 20D gearmotors, making it possible to use them with encoders like our magnetic encoder kit. The following table shows our full selection of 20D gearmotors, which has now grown to 72 options:

Rated Voltage	Brush Type	Stall Current @ Rated Voltage	No-Load Speed @ Rated Voltage	Approximate Stall Torque @ Rated Voltage	Single-Shaft (Gearbox Only)	Dual-Shaft (Gearbox & Motor)
12 V	long-life carbon (CB)	1.6 A	570 RPM	26 oz-in	25:1 12V CB	25:1 12V CB dual shaft
			450 RPM	33 oz-in	31:1 12V CB	31:1 12V CB dual shaft
			225 RPM	58 oz-in	63:1 12V CB	63:1 12V CB dual shaft
			180 RPM	75 oz-in	78:1 12V CB	78:1 12V CB dual shaft
			140 RPM	85 oz-in	100:1 12V CB	100:1 12V CB dual shaft
			110 RPM	110 oz-in	125:1 12V CB	125:1 12V CB dual shaft
			90 RPM	130 oz-in	156:1 12V CB	156:1 12V CB dual shaft
			72 RPM	160 oz-in	195:1 12V CB	195:1 12V CB dual shaft
			57 RPM	200 oz-in	250:1 12V CB	250:1 12V CB dual shaft
			45 RPM	250 oz-in	313:1 12V CB	313:1 12V CB dual shaft
			36 RPM	290 oz-in	391:1 12V CB	391:1 12V CB dual shaft
			29 RPM	350 oz-in	488:1 12V CB	488:1 12V CB dual shaft
6 V	long-life carbon (CB)	2.9 A	590 RPM	22 oz-in	25:1 6V CB	25:1 6V CB dual shaft
			470 RPM	28 oz-in	31:1 6V CB	31:1 6V CB dual shaft
			230 RPM	54 oz-in	63:1 6V CB	63:1 6V CB dual shaft
			190 RPM	62 oz-in	78:1 6V CB	78:1 6V CB dual shaft
			150 RPM	72 oz-in	100:1 6V CB	100:1 6V CB dual shaft
			120 RPM	87 oz-in	125:1 6V CB	125:1 6V CB dual shaft
			93 RPM	110 oz-in	156:1 6V CB	156:1 6V CB dual shaft
			75 RPM	130 oz-in	195:1 6V CB	195:1 6V CB dual shaft
			60 RPM	170 oz-in	250:1 6V CB	250:1 6V CB dual shaft
			46 RPM	220 oz-in	313:1 6V CB	313:1 6V CB dual shaft
			37 RPM	260 oz-in	391:1 6V CB	391:1 6V CB dual shaft
			30 RPM	310 oz-in	488:1 6V CB	488:1 6V CB dual shaft
6 V	precious metal	2.9 A	590 RPM	22 oz-in	25:1 6V	25:1 6V dual-shaft
			470 RPM	28 oz-in	31:1 6V	31:1 6V dual-shaft
			230 RPM	54 oz-in	63:1 6V	63:1 6V dual-shaft
			190 RPM	62 oz-in	78:1 6V	78:1 6V dual-shaft
			150 RPM	72 oz-in	100:1 6V	100:1 6V dual-shaft
			120 RPM	87 oz-in	125:1 6V	125:1 6V dual-shaft
			93 RPM	110 oz-in	156:1 6V	156:1 6V dual-shaft
			75 RPM	130 oz-in	195:1 6V	195:1 6V dual-shaft
			60 RPM	170 oz-in	250:1 6V	250:1 6V dual-shaft
			46 RPM	220 oz-in	313:1 6V	313:1 6V dual-shaft
			37 RPM	260 oz-in	391:1 6V	391:1 6V dual-shaft
			30 RPM	310 oz-in	488:1 6V	488:1 6V dual-shaft

Note: Stalling or overloading gearmotors can greatly decrease their lifetimes and even result in immediate damage. In order to avoid damaging the gearbox, we recommend keeping continuously applied loads under 50 oz-in (3.5 kg*cm) for the versions with precious metal brushes and under 70 oz-in (5 kg-cm) for the versions with carbon brushes (the ones with “CB” in the name). Stalls can also result in rapid (potentially on the order of a second) thermal damage to the motor windings and brushes, especially for motors like this that can deliver a lot of power for their size; a general recommendation for brushed DC motors is to limit continuous current to approximately 25% of the stall current.

Related products

Magnetic Encoder Pair Kit for 20D mm Metal Gearmotors, 20 CPR, 2.7-18V

Tomorrow is Cyber Monday and the final day of our sale; you can check out the Monday deals on our sale page now. The weekend deals are still active until midnight Pacific, so this is your chance to pick out what you want from those and what you want to get on Monday!

Our Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale is nearing the halfway point; thank you to all of those who have already ordered! Today’s doorbusters are gone, but the rest of the daily specials are still active, and a lot more great deals are still coming your way, including the weekend deals we just released. We’re not doing any doorbusters Saturday and Sunday, just lots of extra discounts on big categories, so take your time looking around.

The weekend deals include two items we have never had on sale before: smart servos from XYZrobot and a 6DOF robot arm based on those servos. We recently released an Arduino library for the A1-16 smart servos and arm, making them especially easy to expand beyond their preconfigured sequences for use in your own advanced projects.

Our doorbusters will return starting at 6 AM on Cyber Monday, and rumor has it that might be a prime opportunity to snag one or two of our new Balboa balancing robots!

By the way, our friends at Adafruit are having their own Black Friday sale this weekend, with 15% off their entire catalog and 20% off their Feathers and accessories, plus free items for orders over certain amounts. You can find all the details on the Adafruit blog.

Twelve hours until the Black Friday doorbusters start!

You can check out Friday’s deals and doorbusters flyer on our sale page now; complete details will be available later tonight.