I am thinking of converting my tanks to servo elevation while i have them torn apart. Need anyone to chime in on pros and cons also anything i need to watch out for.Also looking for any pics on what anyone did to convert the H/L unit to have barrel recoil.

IMHO For elevation do yourself a favour and keep the HL. ...
Too much dicking around to get the right speed and with servo it always returns to one position rather than stay where you want it...

Dean, you know I am going to chime in on this one right........

Here is probably the easiest way to do a servo elevation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YgjBRJ9-Dg

You can get the right speed via radio adjustment and this is the last one I did for Dean's Panther F

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFZflT0Tsfk

Dean is correct though you have to set a point as the default for servo elevation.

MikeC.

Hehehe... I knew you would Mike! 

dgsselkirk wrote:

IMHO For elevation do yourself a favour and keep the HL. ...
Too much dicking around to get the right speed and with servo it always returns to one position rather than stay where you want it...

i like the servo elevation but not sure what you mean about it returns to one position rather than stay where you want it?

Greg, I think it is just me not knowing how to config a servo perhaps. Is your elevation servo off the Clark board, or is it separately control thru the radio receiver ? Also, is the servo mapped to a stick on the radio or a pot ?

i have it hooked to a pot on the radio the one for the recoil is on a switch on the radio and the hatch is on a pot on the radio to

Okay that made sense. I have been mapping it to the stick which is self centered. If you use Clark's servo elevation you will have to do the same (i.e. use the stick for elevation).

If you mapped it to it pot then you can leave it at whatever position you want. For stick control it will reset to self centered if you stick is.

Love the hatch Greg...

Thanks Dean

i still want to put a guy in there to make it look like he is opening the hatch....lol

MikeC wrote:

Okay that made sense. I have been mapping it to the stick which is self centered. If you use Clark's servo elevation you will have to do the same (i.e. use the stick for elevation).

If you mapped it to it pot then you can leave it at whatever position you want. For stick control it will reset to self centered if you stick is.

i see so that is how you have it on the stick...get rid of the self centering...lol

For my set up I actually reduce the trim on the multi function left stick, so that only turret movements is on it, all other functions are move off to buttons. So the right stick controls the tank movement in all directions, and the right stick controls the turret movement in rotation and elevation only.

It gives a really cool effect for the moderns like the Bradley and the Leos with servo elevation and servo rotation. 

Well it looks like 2 for and one against. no pics on the installation of the servo for the barrel recoil though. well i am winging it than. I guess there is no right or wrong way as long as it works.

Okay here are some more pics with servo recoil....... First up, my old way of doing recoil (Black servo for recoil and Blue servo for elevation):

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Now I do it this way, it is smoother, no lateral or twisting motion and much more robust:

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Here is a video of it in operation:



Here is what it looks like on the outside:

The Recoil looks good.  I have a bunch of these to do for some customers who have purchased Abrams from me.  I was going to try using Lego rack and pinions, but the technique you have shown takes all the lateral torque out of the normal Servo set up and seems simple enough.  This is exactly how I do servo elevation. 


I use the trim pots on the HK T6A radio for servo elevation.  It works well and you get proportion elevation and control just using the Receiver.  With the TBS( Benedini)BARC4 you can program it to play the cannon elevation sound when the elevation servo moves, so you don't loose the sound effects, although between you me and the gate post the servo itself is a decent sound effect for bbl elevation!!!!  I also found some slow moving gear retract servos, so the servo moves slow without having to add anything else to them.

Continuous servos are also your friend when it comes to tanks.  They can be used for turret( result is proportional rotation right from your receiver) without needing any MFU, and they are good for elevation as well.


SO even without any tank MFU and just using a receiver you can get turret rotation, Gun elevation, and with mixing get  servo recoil as well.  I notice a lot of these tank systems are really quite redundant in what they do, as a regular receive can do most of this stuff.




Cheers

Dan

Actually the reason I keep the elevation and rotation on the stick even though it is controlled by the servos and the radio receiver is so that the sound will still be produced by the Clark board since it is just a redundant control (i.e. left stick channel 3/4 is still mapped to elevation and rotation, but channel 5/6 is also mapped to the left stick which control the servos).

You get much finer control with the pots but you do lose the sound effect when you take it off the MFU.

With the stick or the pot you can still manage the speed of the servo with the radio setting.

well I didn't see the pics before i started, but this is the way i went on the barrel recoil. Also i forgot what the measurement was for the IR bulb down the tube. And is the measurement from front of tube to front of bulb or rear of bulb.

That looks perfect to me !

Nice job! Straight line pull, I like that!

You may want to chop off all that crap below the servo as there will be a bunch of wiring and other items with the Clark board that may come into play...

Oh ok. What about the distance of the IR bulb?

I could swear there was a post here with that information (man, who is running this forum?), any way the tip of the 'bulb' is 9mm from the end of the tube.

I think 6mm???

9mm is that the Danville people use, but the nuclear blast and the shotgun effect I don't think there is much standard with our group.

Half the time we are just happy it actually hit something.

I have a new  3 Watt IR LED that is like a nuclear strike.   It has a range of 150 meters with 60 degree spread.  I have not tested the range but I do know it let up all the tanks in my work shop regardless of where the bbl was pointed.( 9mm tube).

For this one I am thinking maybe it could be located in the breech to try and focus the beam more.  I will test this over the winter and see what shakes out.   It would make a good emitter for an artillery barrage.

MikeC wrote:

9mm is that the Danville people use, but the nuclear blast and the shotgun effect I don't think there is much standard with our group.

Nope, the club standard has always been 9mm.