Mabuchi Motors

[guitarbonham]

My team has never used the mabuchi motors before and we cannot find any documentation on them. how are they supposed to be wired?

Do you use a relay?

Can you use a victor to control the speed?

what size breaker should be protecting them?

how should i connect a wire to them?

We are trying to make a roller that will give backspin to a soccer ball and be able to be reversed to give it a forward spin. we need something that spins fast. would the mabuchi motors be able to handle that? we plan on using two motors that each spin a piece of rubber which is about the size of a marshmallow for lack of a better description.

[pfreivald]

In my experience, the Mabuchi motors have so little torque that they are essentially unusable. They run both directions, but look up the specs for them -- geared down a gazillion times, they could still barely spin a pinwheel.

[Chris is me]

In my experience, backspin rollers don't need much speed. That being said, you'd obviously need a reduction of significant proportions to get usable torque out of the Mabuchi motors, and you might be able to get an okay speed gearing a window motor up just a little. A Mabuchi motor may be powered by a Spike in addition to the other FIRST legal speed controllers.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

The mabuchi can be driven with either a speed controller or Spike. There is no rule that relates motor to breaker, just wire to breaker. Check for the 2010 motor data spread sheet here on CD for specifics like stall current and free speed.