Upgrading Huina 560/1560

Bucket (+new gear)

Found a BIG bucket on thingiverse, which is compatible to the whole Huina range (550,560,570,1550,1560,1570 etc). (Somehow this bucket disappeared agian.) Printing and installing this part, leads to the next annoying thing. The play on the bucket (and also the original digger tool) is quite big. Since a gearbox is used, you expect some play, but not that much. Having a closer look to the parts, there is quite some play between the square bolt (3x3) and the last gear. So changed this to a gear with a linkage, which is reducing the rotational play drastically.

The nice thing about this upgrade, you could still use the original tools. Just add a M3x40 bolt, instead of the square bolt. The other good thing, while the printed bucket did not have square holes, now it does not need to have square holes, making it rotate. Of course the play could also be reduced when adding working cylinders, but that's a different story.

Sound

I don't like the sound of the excavator, so just wanted to add a small switch inside the cabin turning off the sound. Placed the switch in series with loudspeaker, but apparently this was a bad idea. When turning on the power, the sound slowly disappeared once and for all, so it seems. When soldering the wire back to the speaker, the sound was still gone. So maybe this is not a good idea, when you still want the ability for having this additional sound...

Controller (in progress)

Well, the standard '16' channels motor controller is just an forward-stop-backwards operating motor controller. Nothing fancy, like slow start/stop etc. I'll leave it that way, otherwise I better bought the Bruder excavator and create my own controller. The most handy way of controlling an excavator, is having:

• 2 joysticks on top: moving arms, tool & rotate the body
• 2x2 switches at the front: moving both tracks independently
• some other buttons on top, for other stuff

This control style is applied to the Huina 580, which also costs couple of hundred euro's more. (Lately I discovered, you could also buy the Huina 580 controller set, this could be a nice solution when you want to upgrading a none-RC excavator.) Since in my case I need to change too many things, I'll go for a more simple solution.

(will be updated)

DIY Cylinders (in progress)

Still exploring some different routes.
Looking to my 'tested/guesstimated' requirements, 30 mm/s travel speed & load of 80+N.
Buying a cylinder for example from actuonix.com, the L16-R $70 seems to be a potential candidate (not sure if they pointing to 12V or 6V version):

1. 35:1 gear ratio; 32mm/sec; 50N max force (lifted)
2. 63:1 gear ratio; 20mm/sec; 100N max force (lifted)

(I do like there 'servo option' too.)

Any way, let's see what happens, when creating a cylinder myself. Bought already 2 different types of lead screws and a couple of different N20 motors:

Planning to use the D6 spindle, having a pitch of 6 mm/rev, need a 300 rpm N20 motor.
So wondering maximum load from this setup and still puzzling how to create electric spindels best..

(will be updated)