Hello… I’m doing some experiments with the lynx 6 arm… I need to be able lift a little more weight…
I am testing acuracy repetabillity and limits of this arm for a future project idea.
do you think using the 9 volt battery and the AC adapter will harm anything or will it just use more power to do what I need?
or will it matter with built in voltage regulators?
Well if you use one or the other for the Logic power, it won’t make a difference. The power you supply the servos will matter though. There are limits depending on what servos you are using.
What servos are you using with your arm?
I purchased the Lynx 6 and it came with the standard HS-475HB for the base, sholder, elbo and wrist… the griper and wrist are hs-85bb
What are the Voltage specs for the HS 475HB? Would running it at 7.2 Volts like off a battery pack help? How about the HS 545BB Servo? What kind of results did you get?
9vdc will murder the micro servos. The 475’s may work, but the gain in the PID will be increased and the servo can become a bit overly sensitive. The word spastic comes to mind. The best way to increase load capability is to add load balancing springs.
By adding these springs in this way it always pulls down on the elbow making the forwarm appear lighter to the servo.
Beyond that you can replace the 475 servos with 645 servos. But if your going to do that you may as well build the arm from the Servo Erector Set components. That would add more rigidity, but it adds to the cost as well. Hope this helps. 
The Robot Dude’s point about the higher voltage to the regular servos is a good one, but I thought I’d kick in a suggestion as to taking it easy on the micro servos: I usually run my Lynx-6 on 6 to 7.5 volts (sometimes a bit more, if I use a battery and it’s been freshly charged), but the gripper servos (wrist rotation and grip) never see more than 5 volts, as they are powered through their own low dropout 5-volt regulator. I just have a little bit of protoboard in the base along with the rotation servo, that wires the ground and signal lines straight through, but the power wiring goes through the regulator before passing out the other end. That way, I retain enough power to manipulate objects, without having to worry about whether or not my fresh battery or hot wall-wart supply is going to do Bad Thingsâ„¢ to the little micro servos in the business end of the arm.
Hi thanks for the help… the lifting springs did boost the lift to just what I needed for the experiment.
afte my budget loosens up a bit I think I will purchase the custom arm for even more fun…
thanks