Tough Tilt Servo, and Hello!

[SaltyGrease]

I'm a newb on this forum, though I've lurked quite a bit, looking for, and often finding great info. I do both fixed wing and multicopters with my son. I'm more comfortable with airplanes. My 14 year old son is comfortable with either, and has much better thumbs than I have. Maybe because I do all the building. Working on that from two fronts. Bought him an FT Explorer kit for Christmas, I'm sure we'll build it eventually. I've got a couple of the usual boring flight vids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY8TezxSdZE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kHCoGNHLWE

My problem is that we keep breaking the plastic cases on the Emax ES3154 servo. Today, we flew our tricopter with no major crashes or collisions, but still the servo case is cracked, and this is like the fourth one. I think what we really need is a bigger servo, but in the meantime, is there a better/cheaper/different servo we could use? Or can we buy empty cases for the Emax and transplant the guts?

 

[fixnfly]

How are you fastening the servos down? I have never had a servo crack a case before.

 

[Hai-Lee]

Servo cases crack because of shock loads which occur normally during a crash.

If there was no crash then the source of the shock loads could be something being out of balance or bent. To reduce case cracking in the old days when servos were ridiculously expensive was to fit grommets to the mounting holes and fit the mounting screws through the grommets.

A second method was to put a "Shock" bend, (or two), in the pushrod which would compress or expand during a shock event and reduce the loads to the servo gears and case. Being made of Spring steel the bend would return to its normal shape after the shock load was removed. :black_eyed: