L/R traverse and drive motor

[MichaelC]

Hi all,

Has anyone try hooking up the turret L/R traverse to the drive motor ? The reason for this question is that half of my collection are assault guns with fixed superstructure, so the L/R turret traverse is basically a noise maker, and then it just occur to me that if you can hook that up to the motors, you will be able to turn the tank with the turret traverse. My understanding is that the L/R traverse is basically one pos and one neg but polarity gets switch around depended on the direction. I don't know what the voltage is it would be less than the one going to the drive motors.

So my idea is to simply wired the L/R traverse out to the red (Pos+) ports of the two motors. In theory then when there is power coming from one of the L/R, it will then get transmitted to the corresponding motor. The voltage might not be high enough but it might be able to run the motor at a lower speed which actually is exactly what I wanted.

Is this a crazy idea or what ? I am going to do some proof concept today and see if this is feasible, but if anyone has done it or thought about it please let me know and share your thoughts !

MichaelC

[Tankbear]

The turret turn motor supply is at or just below battery voltage and yes just switches the polarity of the supply so you should be fine connecting to the track drive motor. If that is what you ment?

Ian.

[MichaelC]

Ian,

My idea is to take the two wires from the L/R traverse and hook each them up to the pos+ on the motors. So when I use use traverse L it will supply the power to the Right motor and it will get the tank to go Left (slowly) and vice versa. i.e. for my assault guns the turret L/R traverse will actually turn the tank L/R.

Michael.

[Tankbear]

Not certain how well it work as if your only slightly turning you may not get enough voltage difference. I.e. only super spin will you get 7.2v. Suppose can only try and see what effect you'll get.

Also as you cant directly control the traverse motor you need to think about the 360 degree turn mod

[MichaelC]

I will give it a try and see what happens.

I thought the 360 degree is due to the teething on the turret gear and the slipage on the motor and nothing limiting on the motor front. i.e. If you take out the funny teething at the end of the turret gear you should be able to do 360/720 whatever you want as long as you wires not tangled.

[Tankbear]

Hi Michael,

There is a limiter on the turret ring/cog as below a solid patch of plastic.



This is located at the front in ine with the barrel so when you turn and the barrel towards the back it will stop and start clicking and that is the clutch slipping in the traverse motor gearbox.

But if you carefully cut in three extra teeth.



You can go all the way round

Yes you can end up with wires tangled up if you go round and round in circles but I just make sure I turn other way round to counter act it.

Ian.

[MichaelC]

I guess it didn't have enough juice to drive the motor even a little bit. Oh well. It would have been cool if the L/R traverse actually can be made to turn the tank slowly. Wonder if I can make the L/R traverse a trigger and power the motor directly from the battery........

I have been thinking about taking out the plastic piece as per your pic and try it out. I know the motor itself doesn't have anything stopping it.

Thanks Ian for the input.

[Tankbear]

No worries mate. Dead easy to do so no harm trying it.

Ian.