another e-flite servo failure.

[jimmyhorns]

I've been putting Curryzz 300x back together after a minor incident, and went through and checked everything from top to bottom.

To start off with the tail servo was fried (smelt horribly burnt), and the motor itself was seized. Sorted this with a new servo, and thought it was probably due to incorrect throw settings causing it to bind and overheat.

So all fixed up, all set up and all ready to fly today.

Had one really nice flight with it, it behaved impecibly, and then put the second battery in, spooled up, and no lift off. I thought this a bit odd, so spooled it back down again, and looked to see that (with TH on) the swash wasnt moving properly. The aileron servo had stopped working. No crash, nothing different from the first flight.

Back on my desk this afternoon, and with the servo apart, the motor is only working intermittently. The gears look fine, but the motor only resists movement/hums if you press the pinion in a little.

Just a bad servo?... worth sending back to HH?... just get another servo (its Curryzz money, not mine though)....

What do you guys think, ive not seen a servo failure on something relatively new like this...

[Liam B.]

Re: another e-flite servo failure.

What size servo does it take? I may have a savox one you could have.

[barryorbik]

I would be very careful if you are thinking of mixing servo types or makes on the swash, as one of my friends recently replaced a broken ESKY 0508 elevator servo on his Belt CP with a JP EnEg 7.5 one and post replacement he only checked the swashed plate for being level at mid stick - not over its full pitch range. When he tried flying the heli he had great difficulty controlling and it ended in a crash but he could not work out why, so I offered to have a look. During the checks I uncoupled the swash links from all three servos to check them all for broken teeth etc and found when I connected them to my servo tester that the travel was different between the ESKY servos and the JP one, so as the pitch was increased, the swash plate would tilt backwards at the top and forwards at the bottom of its range. As I did not have any ESKY 0508 servos I removed the one from the tail to use on the elevator and fitted the JP to the tail and normality returned after tweaking the tail throws.

Barry

[jimmyhorns]

What size servo does it take? I may have a savox one you could have.

Its a kind offer, but as barry says, you really need to keep the swash servos all of the same type.

Ive given HH a call, and they say send it back

[cjcj1949]

You are right to be careful and it can't be guaranteed but it usually works.

I've mixed servos on cyclic with no problems. You do have to check the swash over the cyclic range you intend to use and correct with ATV if necessary. Servos seem very similar in throw. That's on flybarred though, it may well be more critical on flybarless. Servos of the same type will differ though as each fet is different. There are different loads on the servos in some functions as well. Collective uses all three, aileron uses two, and elevator uses two either side and one from the center.

[Curryzz]

James you are a top bloke

Sorry it's caused you so much trouble.

If needs must I will pay for one, see what happens, just looking at the invoice its only 3 months old and two servos have gone.

Paul

[jimmyhorns]

James you are a top bloke

Sorry it's caused you so much trouble.

If needs must I will pay for one, see what happens, just looking at the invoice its only 3 months old and two servos have gone.

Paul

No worries Paul.

I think the tail servo was our fault, as when I installed the new one, it was binding, and the tail throw setup on the beast X was way out. I think we have to put that one down to experience.

The aileron servo is another matter though, as there has never been any heavy loading on this or crash damage to it...

The good news is, that it flew really nicely A bit twitchy, but then a 300 will be compared with my 600. And now, it has lost its inverted virginity. In idle up there is plenty of power for elevator flips, and sports flying is a doddle, quite a nice machine, when it works!

[simon1]

tbh blade heli's are very hit and miss with there electrics, I have a 130x, my second one and have a problem with the mainboard, my first had a dodgy tail servo. Its spin the bottle time with blades helis and there quality at times, sometimes a good un and sometimes a lemon.

I wouldnt have nothing bigger than a micro from them

[maddog7]

I bought a 450x a couple of months ago and it's turned out to be one of my favourite helis. It's so good at what it does especially for what it is.

A friend of mine bought the same as a result of seeing mine fly but within 10 flights one of his cyclic servos let go, luckily between flights.
I thought, since by that time I had probably 50 flights on mine without issue that if it was gonna fail it would have done so by now but last week it just spun like a top on lift off and lo and behold the tail servo had lost its magic smoke, again between flights!
Component failures like this are just not on, if you buy any consumer item for 300 quid you'd be stomping back to where you bought it if it failed within a couple of months.

The problem is that Horizon will blame the pilot if the heli had been destroyed as a result of such a failure.
I do wonder if these servos are designed to fail to increase profits and that is part of the reason why Horizon customer service is so good? Is it simply part of their business model to happily and helpfully offset replacements for failures which don't total a model against sales of new models? I'm willing to bet the servos in these helis are made by the same people who make the ones in the Carbon Z yak, an expensive plank with a known servo failure issue too!

Perhaps I should start a new thread, "The eflite servo failure thread" ?
D

[A.N.T]

I've swapped out the std ds76's for align 415 and 425's they worked out at £17 each found them to be much better. If you want to get it back in the air I have a couple of cyclic ds76's that I could dig out if you need one.

[tomatwalden]

I've swapped out the std ds76's for align 415 and 425's they worked out at £17 each found them to be much better. If you want to get it back in the air I have a couple of cyclic ds76's that I could dig out if you need one.

On my 450X, I keep replacing the servo gears in the DS76's after crashes (sounds like I've had loads - only 3!). I think however that next time, I'll fork out for replacement servos with metal gears - I hear the Hitec's are quite good - or eFlite H3000's ?

T

[spillage]

Re: another e-flite servo failure.

Put savox in her will transform your heli and a bit more resilient than ef. But all depends on how hard ya smack it lol

[maddog7]

I've swapped out the std ds76's for align 415 and 425's they worked out at £17 each found them to be much better. If you want to get it back in the air I have a couple of cyclic ds76's that I could dig out if you need one.

ANT,
It's kind of you to offer, I'm very grateful but I've put in a DS420 and it's flying well again. I think myself and my friend were both lucky they failed between flights. Good job it's cheap to fix, perhaps that's what Horizon hope their customers will say!

[cjcj1949]

Most digital servos are not designed to handle a stall and you can get this if the servo can't reach the demanded position after a crash. I've been told that you must crash correctly. Put the cyclic and rudder controls in neutral, and throttle minimum before the crash and leave them there. It seems to make sense. So when all else fails, at the last moment, give up.

[maddog7]

I can't help thinking the plastic gears are somewhat sacrificial, you can pick up the gears cheap as chips from amain in the states but the servos failing is another matter.
I'd be happy to put in Align 400 series servos or the Savox ones which I suspect are who make them for Align.
I beat my 450x pretty hard I suppose, made worse by my inept "damage limitation" flying style
I've botched 3 autos with it and not stripped any gears as yet though.