Servo for raising / lowering tamiya landing legs
 

Hi all. Im thinking of using a servo to raise / lower my tamiya landing legs with a self centering on/off/on toggle switch and battery,
Does anyone know of a good servo that will hold in the down position and not creep up like they normally do when the landing legs are down or the trailer has some weight on it as this is going to be use with a A trailer ?

Cheers Tracy

Re: Servo for raising / lowering tamiya landing legs
 

I'm unfamiliar with how the gearing is setup in the landing legs, but I would think a standard size continuous rotation servo should work. You would have to find some way to connect the servo to the gear train. If you could maybe get some images of the gearing. I would be glad to help you find a way get the servo to work.


Shawn

Re: Servo for raising / lowering tamiya landing legs
 

You can't just hook the servo up to an on/off switch and have it work. The servo needs to see a signal to tell it what to do so right off the bat you'll need a servo controller unless of course you pull the circuit board out of the servo and wire directly into the motor. The other as mentioned is you'll need a continuous rotation servo. Standard servo's have built in stops in the case as well as the potentiometer that sends info back to the board to tell it where the servo output is.

My question is why do you want to use a servo over the standard motor/gearbox that comes with the kit.

What I'm looking at doing with one my trailers is possibly trying out some firgelli actuators as the legs for the landing gear.

Re: Servo for raising / lowering tamiya landing legs
 

You are correct and what she is describing is how the legs are set up to begin with so I am wondering why the servo idea myself. The firgelli is not a bad idea but it would have to be put inside the stock legs for stability. Once a firgelli is fully extended they are not real stable. Izzy and I tried it with his crane and my crane truck and they are real wobbly on their own so they need to be inside some kind of a telescoping mechanism.

Re: Servo for raising / lowering tamiya landing legs
 

Pull the gears, remove the stops, done. The pot and circuit board get removed, then wire direct to the motor...continuous rotation servo. I've made them for my crawlers that way, but the motor is controlled via 3 way switch (fwd,neu,rev) on the radio going through a winch controller.

Re: Servo for raising / lowering tamiya landing legs
 

The reason I was looking at using a servo is I dont need the rest of the crap that comes in a Tamiya motorized landing leg kit eg the tuntable base & 5th wheel parts and the skid plate parts that activate the landing legs as this is getting use on a FGD A trailer chassis and the bass plate sits about 5mm from the bottom of the trailer floor.
And was thinking of raising then via a linkage going though a servo horn on the servo that connects to the inner legs ....

Cheers Tracy

Re: Servo for raising / lowering tamiya landing legs
 

Tracy,

If you are wanting to manually control the servo, then maybe you could use a basic servo tester to operate the servo..??

Like this..
http://hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store...vo_Tester.html

Change out the rotary pot for a switch, and the servo tester should move the servo up and down, and HOLD it in the set position (either up or down).. A on/off/on switch would be a good idea to help save some battery power when the legs are up..

The only extra thing that you would need to do is add a battery pack to run the servo tester..

Mark..

Re: Servo for raising / lowering tamiya landing legs
 

technically all the above suggestions could work....but for all the hassle of custom engineering an alternative, why not use the motorized landing legs kit just for the parts you need? might seem a bit more expensive at the outset but by the time you've mucked about and experimented with other bits and pieces, battery boxes, etc you might not be far ahead anyway. You could work out how to do away with the wiring and switches in the coupler area by working through the wiring diagram in the assembly instructions, so the legs only work off a self-centering switch which you can easily swap out for the standard one provided in the kit.

You might be able to recover some of the cost of the legs kit if you offer up for sale all the parts you don't need? Possible somebody might at least want the 5th wheel parts even without the trailer parts...

Re: Servo for raising / lowering tamiya landing legs
 

Just found a vid to back that up...https://youtu.be/keMeZypwN4g