Close

More Progress Plus How to Modify a Servo to be Continuous

A project log for The Kasei Initiative

Working to kick start the robot revolution. It is coming, and the Kasei Initiative will play an important role.

mister-malwareMister Malware 08/14/2015 at 02:260 Comments

I've got 4 servos done after wrecking another and their "sweet spots" for stop values have been recorded, so they're good to go. The weekend's goals will include wiring the joystick and finishing up paperwork so that videotaping can commence ASAP.

Back to the servos, I will not be showing pictures of them specifically because I have found a much better guide here complete with video and all: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-TowerPro-Micro-Servo-Spin-360/step2/Disassembly/ I will mention some things, though. First, the TowerPro SG90's seem to be changed now; instead of wires connecting the potentiometer to the PCB, there are little metal tongs, so you cannot remove the PCB and remove things as easily; if you attempt this, I strongly recommend that you have a solder sucker (I hadn't had much luck with desoldering wick, but if you can do it, it's preferable because these are in tiny areas) and something to hold the servo still, as it is a major pain to remove the soldered joints when it's moving around, and it's probably the biggest reason I ruined two servos. I seriously need to invest in a PCB vice. Also, be careful about the wires for ground, 5v and signal; if they break off, your chances of successfully modifying the servo basically diminish; the first one I ruined had the integrated circuit pop off from the heat that was applied everywhere, and as for the second, I think there's a short somewhere. You will probably need to pry the PCB out of the casing with a flat head screwdriver once you get as much solder off the joints as you can (I definitely had to), but try not to pull on the wires. Last tip: solder the resistors to the bottom of the PCB, that way they can just fit neatly into the cavity left from the potentiometer's prongs being removed. It's a bit less fiddly that way and is a better use of the space than shoving the PCB down.

Hope this was helpful to any who needed this, regardless of it's relation to the project. If done successfully, the servos will still run with the Arduino's servo library just as one of the bigger servos would. As a refresher, when writing the values to the servo, 0 is full speed in one direction, 180 is full speed in the other, and somewhere around 90 is a full stop, which varies from servo to servo, so you'll have to find that "sweet spot" for each servo (for me, success lies in going up rather than going down in value).

One last thing, I have a GitHub account now: https://github.com/The-Kasei-Initiative The third party licenses and other code will be listed there.

Discussions