Just one question.

Are the servo arm splines compatible with other makes or are they specific to these servos?

Hey Alan,

If you read all the info on one of the servos it says the splines are Futaba compatible.

Cheers,
Mike

Thank you, I didn't go that far. I will defininitely try some for my next project.

Alan

Hi folks,

Thanks for welcoming me! Like you guys, I'm a scale modeler and while I fly anything (helis, gliders, sport, jets, etc.) my heart is with scale aircraft. Anyway, while we offer a few motors and speed controls, plus a model helicopter, field box, and a nifty airplane stand for the workbench, I'm principally in the servo business.

For example, my equivalent to the popular Hitec HS-5645MG is the DS180DLHV. It goes head to head with theirs for the same price while basically outputting the same torque and offering the same speed. Why should you consider my servo, instead? Simple . . . better parts. Check us out by clicking on a banner advert if you're curious because I promise, you don't have to be an engineer to see the differences. And note, I'm 'not' saying theirs is bad. I'm saying mine is better.

Anyway, with our servos I use MIL-SPEC components. And our center case is finned aluminum instead of plastic (and note, we make them ourselves stateside from a solid billet of 6061-T6 aircraft aluminum). Our guts are better, too. Like our potentiometer, which is a genuine Japanese Nobel-brand million cycle unit. Plus our gears are all metal (theirs includes a plastic 1st gear - they sell replacements in 3-packs). Also, instead of the steel gear shafts fitting directly into plastic pockets, we reinforce our case with a bronze bushing. The idea of this is helping maintain proper gear mesh - not for a few seasons but for decades! Then , while they use 4 Phillips head screws to assemble the servo, we use 10 Allen head machine-thread bolts (and ours thread into aluminum while theirs thread into plastic). Plus we use 13 o-rings in the assembly while they don't use any. Add to it, our bearings are ABEC-9 while they don't specify (bearings are sold in ABEC-3, 5, 7, and 9 with 9 being the top grade).

We also work to make our servos better able to withstand vibration and shock by using a conformal coating on the PCB (printed circuit board). This is common in aerospace but not in consumer grade electronics. Why? It's because our primary customers aren't hobbyists but the government, universities, and industrial UAS companies. As such, our servos must meet certain MIL-STDS.

Finally, with respect to the price of our 180oz-in servo . . . it's the same as theirs! Part of the reason I price them the same is because as the Japanese are fond of saying, business is war (and basically, I want to take the battle to them and bloody their nose). But partly it's because I don't have all middlemen wetting their beaks (e.g. importer, distributor, dealer). So instead of cutting in a lot of other companies, I take that margin and spend it on making a better product. It's a simple formula.

Anyway, I mentioned I'm a modeler like you guys (I have a couple of Balsa USA models, a Protor Jenny, a Platt Spitfire, and many others so I'm not kidding). The point being, because I grok what you feel in the pit of your stomach when entrusting a model to a radio system, I make decisions about every single component in my servos with that in mind because I feel it too. For example, my favorite model is a 30 year old Platt Spitfire (it's a Mk V and has more than 3000 rivets). It's powered by a Moki 2.10 and because I've flown many models with Hitec 645 servos in them (for many years), when I got into the servo business 6-7 years ago, I felt in my heart I would have to go one of two ways. Either I could compete by making cheap servos (e.g. compete simply on the basis of price), or I could go for making the best possible servos (thus competing on the basis of quality). And since Hitec were the top dog, there was no question in my mind whom I had to set out to beat. But what's interesting is that by streamlining the business model I figured out a way to do both and offer the best servos at really competitive prices. Win-win!

By the way, I only got into making servos because Great Planes wouldn't sell me the 200 Futaba servos I wanted to purchase to bundle with a model helicopter I designed (the idea being to compete with a vertically integrated Chinese manufacturer that bundled their own brand servos with their model helicopter). Anyway, because I'm stubborn I ultimately set out to make my own servos. Today, almost seven years later, we've grown our product lineup and now offer 18 servos!

Note; because I find it aggravating having to look up servo specs ten years after I last used it, deciphering our product numbers is easy because everything means something; e.g. the DS180DLHV that competes with Hitec's offering (HS-645, and HS-5645, and now D-645MW) translates like this;

Our range includes a micro outputting 100oz-in to our top-of-the-range outputting 630oz-in (about 40lbs of force).

Last thing; many have never heard of us. It's because we don't advertise much (other than a small banner advert on this site because I'm into scale models). As I've mentioned, our pricing is sensible principally is largely because of our business model of eliminating middlemen. But it's also in part because I watch expenses like a hawk. This is why we don't carry a lot of the usual promotional expenses - like full page advertisements within national magazines, team pilots, sponsored pilots, or field reps.

The point of this last being everybody pays for their own servos, so if you hear someone saying something nice about my product . . . it's not because they're getting something out of it! I believe in my heart in word of mouth, which can be trusted simply because your friends can't be bought at any price!

Jerry Festa