Servo Control Arm Position
 

All I have ever seen done is to mount servo arms perpendicular to the long side of the servo.
Is there any reason why I can't mount it parallel?

Thanks,

KW_Counter

By doing so you reduce the footprint that the servo has to spread the load. Think getting pushed with your feet together as opposed to feet apart. Depending on application and how much load the servo will see, it may not be an issue at all.

It does not matter as long as the servo arm is in the same orientation as the control horn. The servo does not know which way the arm is facing, nor does it care. But as Speedracer mentioned, it does create a greater load against the servo mount.

Another thing to consider is clearance on the underside of the arm. I know on some of my servos, the hardware would either drag across the servo case, or be blocked from moving altogether.

On some servos this would be inadvisable and those would be any of the two screw mount variety as opposed to the four screw type. What happens is the rocking action caused by this gradually loosens the screws. Have run into this problem on some throttle mounts and in addition to loosening of the two screws the idle setting becomes eratic. The solution i was to mount the servo in the normal fashion for and aft.

John

I see no problem for throttle servos.
The torque reaction (shear force on the anchors) is the same, however, the force trying to pull the anchor is as many times higher as many times the distance between the anchors is smaller.
For servos under some important load, you could eliminate that anchor over-stressing by building some (wood) support around the lower body of the servo.

As I noted the servos with only two mount screws ' Not Four' screws a sideways mount on throttle is an exceedingly bad idea, been there done that, several times an each time it was necessary to go back and remount longditudinally. On a flight surface an sideways mount a 'two screw' servo could even be dangerous because of the rocking which will get worse with use.

John

Depends a lot on the use. On small electrics (where the servo is often hot glued or taped into a solid hole) there should be no problem.

Well... As part of a test bed back in late 2006 I placed a couple of 8611s on the rudder of my 40% Carden 260 as shown in these two pictures, I flew over 600 flights with the servos installed that way prior to changing the servos to 8711s and it is still configured that way today.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1938054 http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1938055

Bob