Cheers, the info is much appreciated, thank you all for taking the time to respond.
I've been looking into switching regulators have some great benefits over linear regulators, but they're probably a bit too complicated for me at my current level of knowledge (my understanding is you have to build a mini circuit around them which is a fair bit more complicated than a linear regulator).
The end goal, is to remove the atmega328 chip from the board and attach it permanently to the project. I then purchase a replacement chip for the arduino board so I have it available for future projects (I think it's a bit of a waste to sacrifice the entire board for a permanent project, especially if you are only using a few pins). So the idea is that the Arduino UNO board is for development only and the chip is then removed once the development cycle is over.
With what you've said, is this possible and correct (in terms of the voltage being split anyway)?
- Have 4 AA batteries connected in series to a breadboard power line providing 6V of power to it.
- Have the powerlines run off to a 5V linear regulator which would then in turn connect to the atmega328 chip and other components
This way, I have 6V going to the servos and 5V going to the chip from 1 single power source. ** I've attached a pic to help illustrate this in case I haven't explained it very well**, please let me know what you think (by all means let me know if you spot any other problems).
If anyone can provide some knowledge or point me to a good beginners post on switching regulators, I'll definitely give it a read and send some good karma your way 
Thanks again for taking the time to read this!
