Bruder Cat Excavator Conversion

[rockNmayhem]

Originally Posted by mojo

nice stuff....really nice stuff... being new and poor to this hobby and lurking for a few weeks on this forum i was trying to find another way of moving the arms of an excavator and what you seem to have seems to be the ticket... hydraulics seem out of the question.... way out of my range of know how and cost.... my question is where did you pick up those screw type cylinders, if thats what they even are, and how do they work radio wise, do you need a speed control or just reciever.... and while i'm asking questions, how do you make a servo go around and around acting like a drill, i thought they had limits to how far they could turn...

thanks Joe ...i'm really green to all this stuff

Welcome to the forum Joe. Glad you like the work you see around here and trust me when I say everyone starts out as a newb at some point in time.

Thanks for taking intrest in my build and to answer your questions in order here you go.

1) The rams or cylinders as you call them are all custom made by me. I turn them down on my lathe and have a vendors post if you'd like more information on them.

2) Using the rams with my Hitec radio works great. I can use the sticks on it just like a full size excavator that I run so it makes it alot of fun and very simple to pick up.

3) I am currently just in mock up of the electronics as well but I will not need to be running a speed control as I'm not running an actual motor in this machine.

4) I modify the servo's pots and make a custom output shaft for the final drive of the servo to get them to rotate 360 degrees and work the rams. You can find multiple places that show pics and vids of how to modify the servos all over the net and it's quite simple.

Again thanks for the intrest and if you have any questions we would all be glad to help.