RC India

Friends..Colleagues..all we know, model War Ships...are  an awesome view, when it rests on stands, and even more awesome, when it cruises in water..with a dark ghost grey, it look agressive and stunning..if so, think a warship mdel with rotating turrets and with an elevating gun on it..!! hooyyy..interesting..but most of the warships are scaled in little scales because of the sheer size of every craft..so, fixing an additional gear box to a slender hull is not a feasible one..so, we adds with a simple micro servo..but most of the time, with a standard professinal radio, it can only turn up to 30 degrees max..and extreme to 45 degree..so wee add a servo streacher..still it can only go up to 120 degree almost..but think about a turret, that can be rotated in 360 degree, with a simple micro servo..and yes with a gun barrel on it that can be elevated..nice..
its too easy to make a servo streacher, with some handy components, but only a few can go through, as it needs a good knowledge in practical electronics..so, if we can rotate a servo in to either direction, it will be simple to make one, and can also used to make more creative things..
here is my idea to make a simple rotating turret, with an elevating gun..and if you are a modeler, that , if you can fix a servo, to a driven mechanism, you can simply add this to your crafts..we can add this to any war ships, PT boats, and land based crafts, including a tank model..
we need only two micro servos for this..  :)

all we know, all servos are working on same principle of frequency streaching..and here we do not need to go in to any deep design side..and all servos are designed to rotate within a limit. so, buying a continuous rotating servo is expensive..then we can alter one servo for our needs..

take one micro servo..you can take any micro servo..in to any weight..
 

remove the all four screws with a micro screw driver..
carefully remove the top cover...take care to avoid spreading the gears all over..

if you feel that you lost the set up of the gear box, draw a sketch in a paper, or take a close up photograph of the servo...
remove all servo gears..

now connect the gear removed servo to a live receiver..then you can see the motor of the servo will rotate in any of the direction, freely...
take a nose plier, and turn the shaft of the potentio meter in to either directions slowly, while the relevent stick, of TX must stay at "0". when the pot reaches a particular area, the motor stops rotating..
remove the nose plier..apply the control stick to either directions..observe the rotation of motor in either direction..and it must stop when you leaves the control stick..if it still rotating slowly..can adjust the trim of TX to stop motor...

now take the main driven gear, that holds the milling for the servo arms..you can see a tag, attached to the under side of the gear once..

cut it off with a sharp heavy duty art knife..and make sure nothing is protuding out...

now..keep the gears away from dust or sand..any..
take the servo in hand..without disturbing the potentiometer..drop some super glue, in a bottle cap, or in to paint cap, and take a tooth pick..
apply thin blob of super glue to the shown part, may be plastic or metal..on either side..take extreme care to avoid the glue spreading in to the carbon pad..

now take a twist drill bit, to the same size of the shaft of the potentio meter..and drill along to the hole, readily having with the driven gear as shown..take care , to avoid over drilling in to out..after drilling make run the bit for several times to make the hole slightly bigger than the shaft size..

after drilling insert the gear to potentio meter shaft, and make sure it is running freely in to both direction, without jamming on the pot shaft...

after making sure, that the driven gear is just free on the shaft of the pot, rearrange the gears back..
and make sure thare are no dust or sand in between the gear teeth..apply a little silicon grease if needed..

put the cover back..please do not try to rotate any servo with fingers in a vilont action..

now take a servo arm like this one..

cut the servo arm, in to a circular ring with a side cutter...
take a washer, that fits to the servo arm gear of the servo..this washer is actually intended to give a slight braking effect to the servo, while we stops it in a position...

place the washer in...
put the servo arm ring in and tighten the servo screw..please do not tight it well..but leave a slight margin between washer and servo body..can tight it later..

now connect back the servo to receiver..
and clamp a crock clip to the servo arm gear as shown..this helps us to notice the rotational direction and speed..
we can rotate the servo in to either directions, and from a very slow speed to a high speed..as per need...

how nice it works...now we got a free rotating servo with us..can do many creative things with it..but here we have to make a working turret with it..will it works..?
see the test video here..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxZ1_Dvyi8M

now we got the servo..time to start to make turret..  :thumbsup:

time to make the turret..Friends..all shown ideas are my simplest ideas, and you can add or choose anything apropriate to you..and the shown turrets are not finished, but just painted for testing, so you can fix any turret, shape and sizes..

take some empty ball point pen bodies and tops..

take a soft pen cap, and make sure that fixes with the servo arm ring once..
insert the cap to servo arm..and make sure it is tight..

cut out the excess length of the top..
add a second tube may be anything from a refil to straw..inside of the pen cap..

take a round flange of a servo, and glue the inner tube as shown..

insert the glued part, in to the cap..and make sure it is simply a little tight, but not jamming..it must rotate freely within the cap..

glue a strip of foam board as shown on servo flange..

attach a piece of foam board as shown..these pieces of foam board acts as a stopper of the turret at 360 degree..

make a turret according to your design..here is a simple one completed with foam board..

can make in to any design and any type..

and paint it with your needed colors..
time to check..

will it works..?  yes..see the video..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAfg6XhatRM

Modelers, now we made a working turret. You can take more time to make a turret according to plan. So, now we can think about a turret with azhimuth elevation of a gun barrel. For our first turret, we took one channel of TX, and all you saw that we can use any channel to control it; and easy.
So, here we need two channel, one for rotation and one for barrel control.

So we can use any TX controls but you can use the right side TX controls for turret control, while the left for prop and direction.

to make a proposed turret we need one sero set up as earlier, and one more micro servo..
place a micro servo, on a foam board, leaving some margin all around..

place and check the servo slot..place the servo from in to out..

now draw a circle with compass as shown..
draw a second one also..

cut out 4 identical pieces..and fix the servo with a piece of foam bord, thus avoids the glue or screw..

start to fix side pieces..
cut out the second circle, and make a drum with paper strips..

glue the drum in servo cam..
build the balance..

make a barrel according to plan.
here i made the barrel from a straw.
paint with appropriate color.

time to fix..and check..

how it works. See the cool video here...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM58RJCj1BM

Friends, all given ideas are mere keys. You can add any imagination to your turrets or all in to scale. All we know how much time we spent on our models, that much be the finishing, and detailing of our models. See how simple it is to add a working turrets to our crafts. You can also add a gun sound with a simple electronic circuits, have some nice crafts.  :thumbsup:

Friends,
I got some mail, asking about to extend a servo lead, for turret use. Answering them all individually is tough job, so i am adding here.
Its all simple once again. Usually all we go to buy a servo lead extension, for our use. It is very easy to extend a servo lead, and can extend up to 4 meters, as i worked many with my rail road switching points, and works well..but avoid using low quality wires for this purpose. As the low quality wires can make a good resistance in the path of electrons to the servo, thus the performance is decreased.

So how to extend servo lead, ok, its all simple..

=> take a servo, may be any..micro / heavy / standard with you.
=> cut the leads on half.

we can purchase the flat ribbon cables in various colors and densities, so, buy a meter of flat ribbon cable, while keeping the wire color codes of servo leads, in mind, and please do not buy too cheaper wires, but at least in 20: 20 density.
here one meter wire costs RS 20/-

then peel of three wires from flat cables all in to same color codes to servo wire..

=> collect some heat shrink tube from any electronic spares shop, in to 3 or 4 mm.
=> its cheap, and costs 20 Rs/- for a meter.
=> we can also use insulation tapes.

peel out the insulation from wires.

=> insert the sliced heat shrink tube on to wires about in to the lengths of 1 inch
=> solder all wire tips with a soldering iron
=> make sure the soldering iron is truly Earthed.
=> if not, you can remove the plug, from wall socket, to avoid any high current leakage from iron.
=> this current can damage the micro chip of the servo.       
               take care.

now, after bright solder, pull in tube, to the joints, and heat the tubes with the crest of the soldering iron, you do not need to buy a heating gun for this.

=> now make sure the wires are ok.
=> look for any protutions.
=> now the servo is ready for the show.

hi roopeshkrishna
hello mate, Yes I am still about in the back ground, watching your excellent builds....... :)
this is a really good tutorial and very useful for those who want 'even more' realism in their models.
well done , very easy to follow steps. :)  :hatsoff: :hatsoff: {:)} {:)}

regards
don

yes Sir..all are simple..

Always wanted to make a continuous rotating servo, this is a very good tutorial to do so. I have seen some other tutorials where the pot is replaced with 2.2k resistor, don't know what difference it makes.