zero torque minimal power - battery wall clock stepper?

[mkstowegnv]

Hi, I have built many electronic devices for my research but know little about motors and your advice is very much appreciated. The latest project requires a thin wire to be waved back and forth (somewhat like a metronome) through an angle that I wish to vary crudely - the resolution of a 1/8 stepper would be fine. This is a zero torque application and a wide rangel of fast or slow steppers would probably do (each wave should take about 2 seconds with a pause to fill in time on each side). Power needs to be minimized (a watt or less) and cost and complexity should be low (there will be many) and the MTBF should be years of continuous operation. The steppers that I assume are used in battery powered wall clocks seem like a good possibility but I have had no luck googling a source. Can anyone suggest where to look?
There might be a non-stepper solution but it would probably need encoding because the angle being waved through can be sloppy but it must not drift over time.
Thanks again. Best wishes, Mark

 

[CarlPugh]

Sounds like an interesting project.
Could you use a piezoelectric crystal?
Good Luck
Carl

 

[sreid]

Could you use an analog meter movement? You could drive, say, a +/-10 V DC meter directly from an D/A converter.

 

[jbartos]

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