Simple Circuits Prevent Servo Overloads

by Aznan Firmansyah, Dialog Semiconductor, West Java, Indonesia, How2Power Today, Jul 16 2018

Focus:
Servos are among the most used actuators in robotics. But some servos, especially unprogrammable servos, don’t have overload protection. Consequently, a user will only find that the servo was overloaded after the servo has become noticeably burned. This article describes how to protect an unprogrammable servo from overload risk caused by mechanical problems using an SLG46140V GreenPAK, a configurable mixed-signal IC. There are two servo protection circuit designs that may be implemented with the GreenPAK. The first one uses an absolute value for a failsafe PWM that will be set when overload is detected. The second uses a delay block to increase or decrease the PWM duty cycle relative to the input when overload is detected. This article describes the operation and implementation of both designs and includes the necessary design files. Example test results are presented.

What you’ll learn:

• How to implement a simple, customizable protection circuit to guard against servo overloads
• How to modify the PWM signal in response to servo overloads

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