Do you trust servos with plastic gears?

[S. Karim]

Some plastic gear servo's with over 100 torque end up being very cheap, 15-20 bucks. Do you trust them? Would you trust them for robotic arms or legs applications?

[Admin]

http://www.societyofrobots.com/actuators_servos.shtml#gears

Ive used probably 50 servos in the last 5 years, and only once did a gear crack. It was a plastic gear on a $13 Futaba s3110 microservo that I told to go back and forth a lot.

However Ive had the plastic output shafts crack on me probably 5 or so times (due to poor design and very rough treatment). I like metal output shafts much more for this reason.

You might also be interested in this post on servo lifetimes:
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=1300.0

[S. Karim]

Is there any different between 51 oz/in torque with nylon gears and 51 oz/in torque with karbonite gears?

[ed1380]

the gears are stronger and should last longer

[sdk32285]

Hi
I have had many nylon gears strip and wear out when exposed to dirt and sand in outdoor mobile robots.