Servo Failures
#26
I have only had one servo quit and that was a used one I bought on line that had the motor quit while on the bench. Must have been a high time usage one, as it is rated 6.6 volts at least. Thank goodness. Back to buying the best quality servos one can afford and taking into account what your all up model is worth. And again vibration raises he-- with wiring, motors and pots. one of the reasons that motors are now soldered directly to the circuit board .
#27

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From: san jose,
CA
I think a smarter servo is an interesting idea but more feature rich equates to higher cost though so may be only for the very high end. But temper that idea with the fact the servo manufacturers don't even provide decent metal servo arms for these high end servos that tightly couple to the splines... there are more basic problems to solve. Glad SWB is out there to make something decent.
#29
Im in the same boat, Im building a Velox XL with JR 8611A servos,
while testing if one servo could over power a unpluged one the answer was yes, but the other servo the answer was NO
With the power on they worked great togeather, but one of them unpowerd the gears would bind and freze and no amount of power would move it.
I have seen peaple cut there single elevators in 1/2 just incase this did happen one side of the elevaor would still work.
I have fried 4 servos all HS5645
2 in ruder applications, and 2 in flap uses in Top Flite Corsair.
I found they do not like to be any binding unlike there anlog brothers HS645
while testing if one servo could over power a unpluged one the answer was yes, but the other servo the answer was NO
With the power on they worked great togeather, but one of them unpowerd the gears would bind and freze and no amount of power would move it.
I have seen peaple cut there single elevators in 1/2 just incase this did happen one side of the elevaor would still work.
I have fried 4 servos all HS5645
2 in ruder applications, and 2 in flap uses in Top Flite Corsair.
I found they do not like to be any binding unlike there anlog brothers HS645
#30
Don't use Hitec servos any more. Have had great service and luck with Airtronics/Sanwa and try and to use coreless when possible. Unfortunately a lot of people won't look out of the box.
#31

Hitec HV Digital servos can be programmed to to only allow so much torque be applied. This protects them from being over-torqued. I use this feature from time to time when I have only one servo on a large control surface.
I have had several servo failures. I have had a brand new plane's aile servo lock in the up position at about 15 degrees (33% Extra). After rolling straight up, I got it figured out enough to land the plane w/o further incident. There were two servos on that surface. I know the good one could not overcome the one that was locked up, thus the rolling assent.
On my helis, ... I have had several servos lock into position. Inspection typically revealed that broken gear teeth were jammed in the gears preventing them from turning. I have had one that electrically would not allow it to move. Took the power off and it would move. Recently I have had a couple failures that just buzzed as they were trying to position themselves and shut off, but could not physically move. They were both free for movement. Gears were stripped right out. I suspect that most of the heli servos that failed for me were due to crashes.
I had the flap servo burn out on the Sprint. I suspect that there was more load on it than expected.
I have had several servo failures. I have had a brand new plane's aile servo lock in the up position at about 15 degrees (33% Extra). After rolling straight up, I got it figured out enough to land the plane w/o further incident. There were two servos on that surface. I know the good one could not overcome the one that was locked up, thus the rolling assent.
On my helis, ... I have had several servos lock into position. Inspection typically revealed that broken gear teeth were jammed in the gears preventing them from turning. I have had one that electrically would not allow it to move. Took the power off and it would move. Recently I have had a couple failures that just buzzed as they were trying to position themselves and shut off, but could not physically move. They were both free for movement. Gears were stripped right out. I suspect that most of the heli servos that failed for me were due to crashes.
I had the flap servo burn out on the Sprint. I suspect that there was more load on it than expected.
#32
Sorry, I did not check back until now. Two of them I was running them on 6 volts (a 5 NiCd cell pack). They were rated for 6 volts. They were HS-225MGs. I don't recall what voltage I had on the third one that failed. It might have been 4.8 or 6 volts.
#33
The only Hitec servos I have had fail were the HS-225's about 4 years ago. Two of my flying friends also had failures of the HS-225. All were motor brush failures, the brushes appeared wear excessively in fairly short operating time probably from over heating. If you had 5 cell pack you were probably over 6 volts coming off the charger.
We replaced the motors (appeared to be a new design) with new ones and no more failures.




