1/16 Oliver Dozer Conversion

[TRUCKMAKER]

Nice job Jim! Looks like you have all kinds of power, now hopefully there is enough weight to put on the ground.

[Rvjimd]

I got a reply back from the help desk of the motor controller. My gut reaction tells me that it doesn't really put out the amps to the RX like they claim. But, it also doesn't seem to like the hitec 645 mg servo. I plugged in an old Futaba servo and it seems to work, if it will lift the blade like the hitec is another story yet to be determined.

I had exactly the same trouble with my dragline using the same controller and same servos. I solved it on the dragline by using a separate battery and power supply for the RX and rope servos.

I spent most of the afternoon figuring that out. By the way, according to the specs for the hitec servo, it SHOULD work with the 2x5 motor controller so somebody doesn't know there own product. Very frustrating afternoon.

Arg...

[SonoranWraith]

I'd go with a separate BEC so when you are under load or possibly even stall the motors you don't have issues. If you run a separate BEC, you would not use the power wires from your esc to the receiver. Also I note that your diagram had a flip channel which is mostly used for bots. It can be used to drive in reverse easily but can just as easily be left unused. Cheers.

[Rvjimd]

I hope I don't jinx myself but I think I figured out the problem I was having with the sabertooth!

First I have to say, I can't believe the dimension engineering help desk never asked or suggested this... All I got from them was some nonsense about regen and battery capacity, they even suggested that I try a 2000mah battery Ya, where am I gonna put that sucker in is tiny dozer?

Anyway, maybe this will help folks with similar trouble.

I was about to see if a slot car motor would replace the motor on the back end of my gear drive units when I realized the carrera digital motors always use capacitors across the motor leads to suppress noise. So I shortened the motor leads as much as I could, added a cap to the pos and neg poles and grounded them to the can. I also wrapped the signal wires from the blabber tooth to the RX with foil.

Here is a link to one site that I referenced to help with the solution.

https://www.pololu.com/docs/0J15/9

If you guys are thinking, "I always add capacitors to my brushed motors" you won't hurt my feelings if you say so. I just never even thought about it, but it makes sense now! I used to race associated 1/10 scale pan cars on a paved oval and we NEVER installed the caps on the motors back then and that was with old Futaba fm radios and old novak speed controllers.

I have run two battery packs with not a hint of trouble.

I bet on a bigger conversion where stuff is not literally right on top of each other, the problem might not happen.

When the blade servo had the jitters before, I always thought, that seems like radio interference?

Thanks for putting up with my rant...

Jim