opjose

Re: Regulators

I learned how problematic regulators can be the hard way.

I put an 8A regulator on my plane to power eight high torque servos and one regular servo.

Everything was fine until I hit the forth or fifth servo connection.

When turning on the plane the servos would freeze or start moving erratically.

Or if everything came up correctly, moving more than a certain number of servos at the same time caused the same behavior... ( no there is absolutely NO binding anywhere... )

It turns out that each servo throws a momentary spike as it powers up and of course while it is in motion. This puts a very fast transient on the line that overtaxes the regulator, exceeding it's capacity for a fraction of a second.

I ended up with two 8A regulators on the plane to eliminate this problem.

Each regulator had IMHO fairly small CAPs, so I assume that's the main reason for the problem.

NiCD's and NiMH batteries suffer no such issues as they can tolerate the momentary high draw with aplomb.