Electrics on fire...AAAARRRGGHGHH

[solosyphos]

Next installment of the 1/8 panzer III steel tanks..
We decided to move onto the dreaded electrics. We didnt have a clue what to do concerning installing electric so back to google to do some research. I soon discovered it was throw a lot of money at it or devise something yourself. We decided that the electrics that came with the cordless power drills worked ok with the drills so lets adapt them for the tank. This was fine with the throttle but if you have ever used a cordless drill the forward / reverse switch is quite hard to operate and a servo would never manage it. Looking for a speed controller that would handle 18v drill motors were super expensive so back to the drawing board. I metered out the reverse switch and realised it was only reversing polarity so we designed a simple method to reverse polarity. It was at this time that I went over to the good old U S A for xmas so left Frank with the drawing to play around. On return Frank had managed to get the tank running using radio control but had only done a very rough job to test the theory. He took me outside and handed me the controls and told me to have a go. 20 seconds later and smoke was streaming from the tank.....AAAARRRGGGHH. He had just bought a brand new radio control, servos and receiver so I was in full panic mode expecting the worst...On inspection it was the drill electrics that had burnt out. I hadnt moved the lever far enough and as you can see from the photos the first rough connections ran very close so I have managed to bridge both + and -
and therefore burn out the electrics. Luckily we had a spare so back to the workshop for a rethink. The idea worked but we had to neaten it up. See next lot of photos for the almost finished board. Instead of top wiring all wire run under the board. The first copper connection on each servo is positive with the other arm being on negative. When the switch is operated the arms move and the positive arm moves to the negative and the negative arm moves to the positive thus reversing the motors.Hence forward and reverse.......
Here is a link of RC movement with the old system with elevator and rudder sticks to change direction. It was hit and miss as you will see

http://s889.photobucket.com/albums/ac94 ... edia_share" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The new system uses the auxilary switches on the TX so there is no room for error.This will leave the rudder control available for when we get the turret ready to be controlled using a 360 degree rotating sail heavy duty servo.Seems to work great