Not to beat a dead horse but Frank is dead on with this building philosophy. We all know how much time goes into these beasts and battles are few and far between. If something breaks that can't be repaired instantly, you lose time doing what you spent scores of hours building and preparing for, especially if it's your first battle. Some of the veterans cherish punishing their tanks (they get a crazy look in their eye) because they know they can, they are that well built. The question is, can you do the same?
Always figure the worst case scenario. Turn the turret sideways so that the barrel is perpendicular to your direction of travel. Bring your tank up to full speed and run your barrel (just the tip) into an immobile object at full speed. If you think your servo will survive that collision, build on. If not, plan on a different mechanism with slip built into the system either with a belt or roller. Tom (my turret rotate and paintball feed didn't work last year so I speak from experience) Lum On Feb 23, 2009, at 5:52 PM, Frank Pittelli wrote: > > Joker wrote: >> Not to hijack or anything, but wouldn't adding those two switchs just >> give you 'full on' or 'full off' in either direction? > > Yep. But that's all that is needed when using a low RPM geared motor > for a rotate system. Cheap, powerful, simple, effective and reliable > ... hard to beat that combination. Of course, if you want to spend > more > money for a more complex and less reliable proportional speed control, > you can add that if you want. Simply replace the servo/switches by > the > speed control (keep the servo/switches in your field box, because > eventually you'll be putting them back in the vehicle when the speed > controller starts acting up.) > > When it comes to servo motors, a hacked servo simply won't have enough > torque or reliability for rotating a fully equipped turret. Hacked > servos are great for kiddie toys and table-top robotics, but our tanks > are at least an order of magnitude larger than such things. (The one > thing you learn in the science and engineering world is to respect > orders of magnitude.) We're talking about quite a few pounds of weight > in the turret alone being tossed around by various dynamic forces on > the > battlefield (including the inertia of 100+ pounds when you run into > something) and the rotate motor has to handle such loads many, many > times in a single battle, let alone over many years of battling. > > Just keep one thing in mind: No veteran battler has ever been sorry > because they over-engineered any of their tank systems. > > Frank P. > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
