Hi everyone,
Well, after a long long time away from the forums i'm here again...
And i'm happy for that.
Today i'm going to show you my recent project of a new hydraulic open center valve. I was searching for a valve with the best compromise between very low leakage, low actuation force needed, compactness, smoothness and the higher the possible lifespan.
So i built it a small scalaeproduction for me and some friends, and the final product seems to me very good.
I had in my mind something that could be fitted in a wide range of models, starting from the very small and up to models that weight 40-50Kg, so there was the needing for the valve to work well even with a quite high pressure. The result is a valve that can handle a pressure up to 50-60 Bar with the Hitec HS82, but until 30-40 Bar the Hitec HS 81 is enough.
To get a near-zero leakage and a good reliability over time i chosen to build it in alloy steel, hardened and ground with extra tight tolerances.
Here is a demo with 50 Bar of pressure but i tried with 60 Bar and it works very well too (but my actual brushless is not happy with that pressure and became quite hot).
The proportionality and smoothness seems to be very good even at the higher pressure, and this is not an easy thing to achieve.
These valves are already at work on a Cat 365 of a friend That weight 40Kg and has a pressure of 45 Bar. The model has done some months of various hard testing on natural compact soil and two days at the "ModelGame Bologna" in the past december: Sathurday and Sunday around seven hours a day with almost no stops and working hard with no issues.
So i'm quite satisfied.
http://youtu.be/OVUPcK1UuFo