Searching for servos.

Hi.

I'm looking for propotional servos for a small robotic projoct, where I need small servos that can operate minumum 270 degress, but have not been able to find any.

Most servos I have found either

- turns approx 170 degress, and that's not enough for my needs,

- or is continuously turning, witch is to no use as I need to be able to move to a specific location.

What I need is a largely a device like this:

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that it a rotation-angle of at least 270 degrees. 360 or more would be even better ;-)

Do you have an idea on where I can get such servos?

I would be happy for any hints on where to find such servos.

/Henning

Reply to
Henning Wangerin
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snipped-for-privacy@hitecrcd.com Have you contacted Hitec RCD to see if any of their servos could be modified to do what you want? They have one robotic servo that can be customized.

Reply to
Vance Howard

Henning Wangerin wrote in news:5057b345$0$289$ snipped-for-privacy@news.sunsite.dk:

My electronics background is screaming "stepper motor". But it depends on the application specs, which we don't know.

Brina

Reply to
Skywise

There are sail winches (for sailboats) that work just like a servo. They are usually slow and turn a few turns from end to end.

Here's an example:

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You can increase the throw of a servo by adding resistors to the two outer leads of the potentiometer, but you might not be able to reach the full 270 degrees without overdriving the pot. I do not know if there is gearing between the output shaft and the pot. If there is, it could work.

Reply to
Robert Roland

All the servos that I've taken apart put the pot right on the output shaft (which makes sense -- you want to measure the output shaft, not some gear train's opinion of it).

Most of the servo pots that I've seen would just barely read over 270 degrees -- you need to be able to reliably read position past the intended ends of travel, or the servo will "run away" (most likely into a mechanical stop). So if you could get 270 degrees out of it, it'd be finicky.

Having said that, most servos have a mechanical travel limit (again that works off the output shaft). There's usually a pin running in a groove of limited extent, or a pin running into a vane. Cutting off the pin gives you round-de-round mechanical travel, but doesn't solve the pot travel problem.

All in all, I think you could reliably get more than 180 degrees, but I don't think you could get up to 270, and you'd have to either know what you're doing going in, or be smart enough so that you know what you're doing coming out.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

One of my servos MUST be at least 225 degrees. I've been looking on sail-winch servos.

Some of them need more to get maximum benefit, but wound work with less that 270.

That may do the task.

Thanx

/Henning

Reply to
Henning Wangerin

You can find a servo that is capable of being modified for continuous rotation and modify it by taking the pot out if possible. Now if you modify the pot feedback with gears or pulleys, you could get 2X the output rotation for 1X pot rotation. For example a 12T gear on the output shaft and a 24T on the pot, then instead of 170 Deg full throw, you'd get 340 Deg full throw. You don't have to use gears, you can use string and pulley's with a spring for tension or something like that. If you read the pot ohms from one endpoint to the other you could find a multi-turn pot that would give the right change in resistance within a turn or so.

I've thought of doing similar but the servo's pot would be on my actuator and the servo would be used like a gear motor to move the actuator. If you wanted to get more control you could do something with a continuous servo and feedback to an Arduino, the application I'm interested in involves an airsoft gun aiming device, the arduino can be programmed to stop sending pulses when no move command is being sent, that way the servo won't drift and jump around from pot or electrical noise. The servos would turn screws or worm & wheel to point the airsoft gun. The Arduino, or similar, approach could be used to open the door to all kinds of possibilities even controlling industrial servos, CNC machines, & Robotics from a hobby radio control transmitter.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

That's not a bad idea.

I'm not sure if you're confused or me, but the pot in a servo isn't just a variable resistor -- it's a real potentiometer, that gets 0V and servo power, and reads the servo position as a voltage.

If you could find a 3-turn pot _and_ you could figure out how to extend the output shaft out the bottom of the servo, you'd get a 360 degree rotation servo out of the deal.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

When I started in R/C you could buy left hand and right hand servos, most of the sets I saw came with 3 right hand servo's and 1 left hand servo. I used to take my servos apart and reverse the pot leads and motor leads to reverse servos. After doing this, I had to re-center the servo. Because of this I believe servo center isn't pot center and servo rotation isn't necessarily end to end on the pot. So if a servo uses maybe 120 Degrees of a 180 Degree pot, maybe using a (180 X 3) degree turn pot might give a (120 X 3) 360 degree output on the shaft. Or if you made the pot external you could do the ratio you wanted. I guess one could use a string pot and a drum to wind string to make a multi-turn output shaft.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

Nominal center definitely isn't real center, and if you take one of the pot elements out completely you'll see that it has a bit more than 270 degrees of element available for sensing rotation.

I reversed a couple of HS-55 servos a few years ago -- I don't know if I'll try that again, but I'm pretty sure I won't try it with anything smaller!

Reply to
Tim Wescott

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