I am trying to build a robotic arm and for the base I need a servo with a lot of torque. After browsing through hobbyking's servo selections I noticed that winch servos offer a higher torque for generally a lower price, however, I do not have any experience using them.
Before I commit to spending a lot of money on potentially incorrect servos for my project does someone know whether there would be a problem using winch servo for the base that would only need to rotate around 90 degrees?
I have read that winch servos are not as precise, but as long as the servo is within 1-3 degrees of what it should be that is fine with me.
Also can you still tell the servo to turn to 0 degrees or 35 or 87 degrees like a normal servo or is it like a continuous rotation servo where it keeps turning until it hits the end of its rotation and writing 100 vs 180 simply controls the speed?
The normal servo motor has an 'arm'. Most can do 180 degrees, some 360, some continuous rotate.
If you replace the 'arm' with a disc for a rope, you have a winch servo.
The winch servo is sometimes used with the 360 degrees, or with a continuous rotating servo.
The main use seems to be for RC sail boats.
If you want an accurate 90 degrees servo with a lot of torque, please forget those winch servos and use a good quality normal servo.
Before I commit to spending a lot of money on potentially incorrect servos for my project does someone know whether there would be a problem using winch servo for the base that would only need to rotate around 90 degrees?
If only 90 deg rotation is needed, then use a regular servo. If the arm is large then use bearings (lazy susan setup) in the base so it takes the load and a really large servo isn't needed.