I’ve built a arm with a trigrip hand and was having issues with the trigrip being to heavy to use. I rigged up a counter balance system that seemed to work, the arm was able to move and lift itself, but now it doesn’t seem to work anymore. When moving the shoulder joint the arm will sometimes not move, or move and then go limp. The servo also gets very hot during operation, which I’m not sure if it did before. I tested the servo with no load and it seems to work fine, and I tested it on the arm with no hand, which should be a pretty easy load, and it does not work. Could I have burned out my servo, or damaged it by working it to hard? I would think that if I burned out the servo it would not work at all.
Also, I’m powering the 10 servos on the arm and the SCC-32 with a 6 Vdc wall power adapter. Should I be using a different setup if I’m concerned with the servos being able to provide enough torque?
Thank you.
Sounds like a possible insufficient power supply issue. I’d disconnect the other servos and see if the suspect servo will operate as needeed. If it does, then a bigger power supply may be needed. Ypu can also use a multimeter to monitor the supply voltage to see how low it drops while the arm is operating.
Heat is the enemy when servos are concerned. When servos are doing a lot of work they can heat up to the point they can become damaged (excluding HSR59XX). Always monitor the servo case when applying a heave load to a servo.
Zoomkat, I disconnected the other servos and it would still not operate as needed. I’ll check the current in my servos during operation to verify it is not a power supply issue.
Robot Dude,
I noticed when working with the my arm that the servos would simply not work because the load was to much, does this actually damage the servos? Is there a point where the servos can manage the load (actually move) but the load is to much causing them to get hot and thus damaging them? Perhaps this is what I did.
The servo in question heats up without having a load attached to it, does this indicate that it is damaged?
It’s not a good sign… 
If you have not witnessed the magic smoke, that’s a good sign… 
Seriously though, for a servo to be externally hot means internally it is extremely hot. The plastic servo case is not a good conductor of heat so for it to get hot in a short period of time, that’s not good. Warm to the touch is ok over a long workout since the heat has more time to warm up the plastic case, this is expected. Ideally, the best design is a metal case that can dissipate the heat like the robot servos.