Couple questions - electrical

[Tom]

Hi guys, got a couple questions about the electrical aspect of the build process. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you for your time, here's the questions:

Q1) if I were to attach four servo motors to a planet 5 receiver with correct batteries allready wired to it, would I be able to control the servos with the controller or is there something I've missed?

Q2) do I need a v tail mixer for every ant weight or are they optional?

Q3) how would I attach servos to plastic? Let's say 5mm HDPE

Q4) where could I find decent wheels for an ant weight?

Q5) how would I attach the wheels to the servos?

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Hi Tom.
Ok, 1) If you still have the servo controller boards and have modded the servos for 360 degree rotation, then you just plug them into the receiver with the battery and it should all work.

2) A mixer can make driving a lot easier, but is not necessary. Some transmitters will do mixing for you. If yours doesn't, then without a mixer you may be driving on the diagonals on the joystick instead of forwards and backwards. If this is something you think you can cope with, a mixer isn't essential.

3) Some use screws, I use double sided sticky pads or tape and theyve never failed me! Very easy.

4) Decent wheels can be anything you like, but Lego wheels are always a good place to start.

5) This can be tricky. Usually servos come with servo horns (little plastic things that fit on the hub of the servo) which you can screw a wheel to.

Hope this is some help!

[Tom]

Thank you for the advice Dave, the reason I'm asking is cause I haven't been able to order the kit for my original plans for an ant due to my original funds being restricted. Anyway, I'm thinking about buying 4 of the pre edited servos and horns from the antshop, So then all I need is some wheels and some HDPE. (any links would be awesome - my idea originally was a Ming 2 style ant, but I've had to change it to a four wheel drive ram bot - in the style of crusader 2 from the original robot wars - http://robotwars.wikia.com/wiki/File:Crusader.jpg)

[haz]

Note for using 4wd with servos, each side of the drive (2 servos) must be modified at the same time, much easier to get them perfectly neutral with the trims and stop them fighting each other. Some use a Y lead to do this, I just join up the servo wires to one plug for the RX, cheaper, lighter and simpler.

May I also direct you to the twin wonders of http://www.directplasticsonline.co.uk/ and http://www.ebay.co.uk/ For the finding and buying of HDPE.
Just a thought, with standard servos, you won't really ram... but you will push. you could speed hack them, but you would have virtually no pushing power. (I speed hacked mine, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xA2zJzN3LA)

Good luck