Hack a Servo

Servos are small boxes that has a DC motor inside and a gear box, it also has a potentiometer that tracks its position and makes them perfect for going to specific angles. But there is a downside, it can't move past 360 degrees so it is useless for using as motors on a car.

So in this project you will learn how to make an continuous rotating servo (never stops), for robotic purposes like putting one on each side of a chassis with wheels

Step 1: Parts & Tools

Here is a list of parts and tools I used for this project.

Parts

• The servo that you want to hack.
• Two wires.

Parts

• soldering iron and tind.
• cutting plier.
• screwdriver.

Step 2: Removing

Take your screwdriver and screw the screws on the bottom of your servo out. Take away the bottom and the top cover, but be careful when lifting the top cover off, it might be gears falling out.

There is many layers of gears inside, the gear thats on the top you need to take off and do some changes to. you can see on the photo above that there is two small plastic pins sticking out off de gear, you need to cut those off, they are there so the servo wont go any further than 180 degrees.

Next you need to cut the connections to the potentiometer and motor, than remove the circuit board out of the servo.

Drag the rubber gasket off the servo wires, than you can have it on your new vires so the servo doesn't get water damage and the vires will hold better.

Step 3: Soldering

De isolate the two new wires about 0,5cm at the ends and solder them to the motor connections.

Step 4: Finishing

Set all of the gears back together as they were and push the top cover on again.

Slide the rubber bearing on the cable and close the servo up with the bottom cover.

Take the 4 screws and screw them back into the holes.

Now that you are finished than you can connect the servo to your electronics and start rolling.

Thanks for viewing and if you have any questions or tips about this project than leave them in the comments. Check out my channel for more projects that you can make.

Comments

[plastkort]

I have plan to make some kind of motor that makes a magnet spinning, the magnet will pull another magnet and might be working hard since the second magnet is under water, what is the best kind of motor to use for this ?

[ibenkos]

I am working on a project that will be needing this, thats why I took out the electronic board.

[ananords]

er også fra Norge :-)

[Heyup]

anyone know how to get a small dc motor to rotate the same speed as a second hand on a clock, cant find a ible anywhere? using a stepper motor at the moment.

Thanks John... :)

[ananords]

https://youtu.be/XUm2nj7te8E

[ananords]

you can control the speed if you keep the electronics

[rafununu]

Who would make that ? It's like buying a pizza to have a slice of ham !

[gulliverrr]

I don't get it either... Could be renamed, Don't hack the servo, use a DC motor straight away then again you get an easy way to have the reducing gear ratio to slow down the rotation... .

[ChrisB13]

I bought a 20 pack of tiny hobby servos a while back, im considering it on a few. Sometimes its nice to have things move more than 180 deg.

[Heyup]

I think its a great idea as I cant get my dc motors to rotate slow enough, thanks for sharing :)

[JonasN1]

so we took apart a servo to use the dc motor inside...