The purpose of this self-outing is to maybe make some folks think twice before returning allegedly defective parts when a modicum of thoughtfulness may reveal that user error is to blame. Here's the story"
I have 2 servo testers, one a relatively new Spektrum brand, touch screen, balances batteries, etc. The other I just got in a lot of parts I bought at a garage sale. It's an older turn-dial Turnigy brand, but seemed to work fine, so I began using it here and there. Then I noticed that some servos seemed to hum when plugged into the Turnigy, and also that the centering function did not agree with the centering of my radio or the other servo tester. THEN I'm building a new wing, and BOTH servos that I just tested and centered let the smoke out when plugged into the receiver. I was a little miffed, I had never had a FT part go bad on me, servo esc or otherwise, let alone two failing in unison. The coincidence was too much to be defect, so I thought carefully, poked around, and realized what I had done:
These days, input voltages are not as often critical, so many things will take 5-24v, and deal just fine. I had become too accustomed to that, in part because my Spektrum tester can use any battery from 1 to 6s to test a servo. The Turnigy, the OLD but not really that old Turnigy, expects between 4.8 and 6v, and NO MORE, as it comes from the tail end of the separate receiver pack days, which were often 4 AA type batteries, yielding between 4 and 6v. It says so in plain text on the case. I had blithely been using a small 2s lipo, pounding upwards of 8v into the poor thing, hence the humming, inaccurate centering, and bruised then burning 5g servos. Now I use an ESC with it to get my 5v, and it seems to work fine in spite of the abuse, the centers all agree now and no more humming, but I could have easily just sent the servos back and unfairly blamed FT quality for my ignorance. I'm sure there are a number of lessons here about overlapping technology and obsolescence, etc. I just like to document and share these kind of quirky mishaps, I find them helpful anyway. Cheers!
I have 2 servo testers, one a relatively new Spektrum brand, touch screen, balances batteries, etc. The other I just got in a lot of parts I bought at a garage sale. It's an older turn-dial Turnigy brand, but seemed to work fine, so I began using it here and there. Then I noticed that some servos seemed to hum when plugged into the Turnigy, and also that the centering function did not agree with the centering of my radio or the other servo tester. THEN I'm building a new wing, and BOTH servos that I just tested and centered let the smoke out when plugged into the receiver. I was a little miffed, I had never had a FT part go bad on me, servo esc or otherwise, let alone two failing in unison. The coincidence was too much to be defect, so I thought carefully, poked around, and realized what I had done:
These days, input voltages are not as often critical, so many things will take 5-24v, and deal just fine. I had become too accustomed to that, in part because my Spektrum tester can use any battery from 1 to 6s to test a servo. The Turnigy, the OLD but not really that old Turnigy, expects between 4.8 and 6v, and NO MORE, as it comes from the tail end of the separate receiver pack days, which were often 4 AA type batteries, yielding between 4 and 6v. It says so in plain text on the case. I had blithely been using a small 2s lipo, pounding upwards of 8v into the poor thing, hence the humming, inaccurate centering, and bruised then burning 5g servos. Now I use an ESC with it to get my 5v, and it seems to work fine in spite of the abuse, the centers all agree now and no more humming, but I could have easily just sent the servos back and unfairly blamed FT quality for my ignorance. I'm sure there are a number of lessons here about overlapping technology and obsolescence, etc. I just like to document and share these kind of quirky mishaps, I find them helpful anyway. Cheers!
