A discussion with a fellow RCG member has led me down this path to help solve the issue of how much current a servo draws under regular use and max use current draw. Knowing this information is a great way to determine if an external BEC is necessary and it is also a great way to prevent brownouts and subsequent crashes.
Just think if this information was known years ago. I can only imagine how many crashes would have been prevented if servo manufacturers would list this data.
I have been trying to nail down this data by searching the WWW and was led to a french website that did have some servo draw information. It's fairly old and does not list a number of newer more popular servos.
As a testament on how scarce this data really is, here is a thread;
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show....php?t=2123039 with over 500 views and yet no one has been able to put a finger on any kind of decent data that we can use relative to max servo draw numbers.
ServoCity (my favorite place to buy servos) does help us out some by giving is this for example:
Current Drain (4.8V): 5.3mA/idle and 400mA no load operating
But knowing that is not enough for us. We really need to know what these servos are pulling under load and what is their max draw.
So in an effort to help my fellow modeler, (do I have Mike and Bryan to blame for this?
) I have started down the path to discover something that is not freely known. I hope to get my test equipment up and running within the next week or so and start testing servos. I'll keep a running list of what I learn and I hope this will help us all out in the future. Just like Dr, Kiwi did with brushless motor testing when there wasn't any info out there for us.
And of course I'll list the equipment I am using and post some photos of my test stand so if anyone else wants to try this for themselves they can do it. And as usual, prototypes can always be improved on so yours will be better than mine.
Frank