Two servos wired to same PWM signal?

Support Servo controllers and servos
1

Hi,

I’m testing out a robot arm prototype and it has two servos in the shoulder lift joint. I was testing with the MaestroControlCenter and yesterday I managed to burn out the circuit board in one of the shoulder servos. It still smells of that special tang in here now …

I think it happened because I was moving the shoulder servos individually and they were in contention for long enough for one of them to burn out.

So - my question is, so that I can test the shoulder joint without having to write code for synchronous movement; is it ok to link both servos to the same PWM signal wire?

cheers,
Kevin.

2

Hello.

You can connect both servos to the same PWM signal. Please note that servos can have different neutral points, even if they are the same model. Also, in general, using things in parallel to get more power can lead to this kind of problem, so this proposed solution will not necessarily prevent this from happening in the future.

  • Grant