Servo overheating?

[OrangeDRAGON]

Something odd happened with the steering servo on my Raider, after driving a solid 30 minutes the steering started being 'delayed' to react to my input and after 5-10 seconds of that it would stop moving at all. I noticed the chassis plate under the servo was very warm, almost hot.

I'm thinking the servo was over heated, and I was going to replace it just to be safe. I haven't yet tested it again after cooling down - just wondering if anyone has seen anything similar.

I've had servo motors die, gears strip, but I've never had this experience.

The servo is AR390133 - can someone recommend a drop in replacement I can get from tower hobbies?

Thanks!

 

[WoodiE]

@OrangeDRAGON I'd check your Arrma Raider's steering linkage. Servo's typically don't overheat unless something is binding or the endpoints aren't set properly causing them to overwork themselves.

 

[OrangeDRAGON]

Well I hadn't had a chance to check on this in a couple weeks, so just got into it today. Started with the rig cool and fresh batteries, and it exhibits similar behavior right away:

1. Turning right, the servo does nothing
2. Turning left, it ignores input until the last 20% of steering then will turn the wheels left
3. Centering steering it either does nothing or starts to move slowly towards center (but doesn't make it all the way).
4. After about 2-3mins I can feel warmth under the chassis plate where the steering servo is.

I've double checked settings on the Tx, everything is where it should be. If you adjust steering trim, for example, it acts just like I mentioned above I can trim left, but not trim right.

Throttle Fwd/Rev work perfectly.

I inspected the steering linkage and manipulated it by hand, nothing is binding, with power removed I can turn it side to side with equal force, smoothly.

At this point I'm going to pull and replace the servo - which is why I was asking about a recommended improvement over stock, preferably something with metal gears. Edit: The ADS-7M appears to be same dimensions and has metal gears, so I'll get that to replace the ADS-5.

If this doesn't fix the problem I'm going to look at swapping out the Tx/Rx, but my gut says it's a servo problem...

 

[OrangeDRAGON]

Just in case anyone else comes across this post by searching for similar symptoms - the servo was bad, replacement works perfectly. The original problem was incorrect endpoint adjustment (from factory, it is NOT set adequately in this case) and a lot of turning and full turn caused the servo motor to burn up to a point it was not working correctly.