Advice about micro servos

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

Hi, my current project requires me to use a micro servo, I'm currently using a Power HD Sub-Micro Servo HD-1440A.

The issue is I've been through three of these in the past month, one way or another they all end up broken.

I believe this can be caused by forcing them round, which I believe is what happened to the first one. The second one worked fine until one day I accidentally uploaded the wrong arduino sketch, which used analogwrite instead of the servo library (it was still within the 180 degree limits), and when I uploaded the correct sketch it just wouldn't move at all. The third one, I bought as a spare, and that one just span round the first time it was used with the example servo sketch, so I really don't know how that happened.

So other than them being forced, or commanded to go outside their range, what can cause them to start spinning? I'd also appreciate any other advice about servos since I'm not really having much luck with them.

2

Generally don't power the servo from the arduino, use an external power supply. Also not having the arduino ground and servo external power supply ground connected together can harm small servos and cause erratic movement. In your code, set the servo position to a middle value prior to attaching it.