Vibration Isolation

You might be able to devise something from small O-rings or short lengths of rubber tube.

I was thinking of that also. the panel is 3/8" thick, so maybe the tube 3/8 long and then "O rings under flat washers,,,,

Joe

I assume you know about them but McMaster Carr is a great source for mechanical items.

We don't know if this is a one-off home item or a product. This suggestion is probably worthless unless it is something at home. Benefit might be obtained by hard mounting the motor to a small steel plate and then mounting the plate to vibration isolators. Based upon our old friend F=mA we would expect the force from the motor vibration to accelerate the more massive motor+plate less than the plate alone. The vibration isolators would provide further attenuation (mechanical low pass filtering).

Soft shoulder washers would provide your previously recognized benefit of not transmitting (very well) the vibration through the screws. The vibration isolators from McMaster Carr and other sources have rubber in between the two hardware items so they also reduce the transmission of vibration through the hardware.

Let us know how your project turns out.

OOPS: Paragraph #2, second to last sentence should read "less than motor alone".

Is there a concern for rigidity of the mount? Would allowing motor to slightly move compromise some feature of the operation of the mechanism?

Ideally, you would use a mounting with characteristic frequency well below the frequency of the gear noise so that the mount will act as an acoustic filter.

Better yet would be to put the motor on a subpanel and resilient mount the subpanel.

If the motor position is critical, you may find it easier to damp the panel by loosely mounting a limp mass to the panel back to damp out panel vibration. I saw a really neat damper used on a probe in an analytic microscope. Normally vibration would cause the probe to vibrate and disappear, but a microscopic canister with loose tungsten powder was put near the probe tip and provided critical damping to kill vibration in the probe tip.

I was thinking of on both sides of the panel something like a shoulder washer.

But all I could find are one made of hard materials. And that would just transfer the sound anyway.

A soft Grommet would do nicely,

But no one makes one that would fit on a 3/8" thick panel,

So I thought use the grommet just like the shoulder washer one on each side of the panel just trim off one side of the grommet so it is like a soft shoulder washer.

Thoughts?

Joe

I'm having difficultly understanding how a small motor is driving a 3/8 panel. Is it metal?

wood

Two sided foam tape.