Alternate Tetrix Motors and Batteries

[Don Wright]

Being a team that never settles, we will continue to evolve or mini-bot until the last day of the season. Now it's time to try some more of those innovative ideas...

Unfortunately, some ideas might put a little more stress on the poor Tetrix motors than we like...and at $30 a pop...it gets expensive.

Before I go further I want to clearly say I KNOW THIS ISN'T LEGAL FOR COMPETITION.

What I want to do is find some alternative motors that have similar characteristics as the Tetrix motors for for a realistic price (i.e. $1-$5 or less which is about what they are worth retail...). We could then use these for R&D and then when we are finally ready to test with real Tetrix motors, we switch... I'm probably going to do the same with the Tetrix batteries...

So...before I start digging...has anybody already looked into this? We might even be able to find the exact motor somewhere else wholesale without the gearbox and the $20 Tetrix sticker...

For example, I'll start at the easy places:
http://www.robotmarketplace.com/products/motors_ungeared.html
http://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/products.asp?dept=1104

[MrForbes]

The first step would be to define the mechanical specs, and analyze the performance of the legal motor. Then you can search for other motors with similar size/performance.

Someone might have done it already....what have you found in your searches so far?

[Trent B]

You could use a lower fuse on the battery, the thermal protect wires or modify the burned out motors.

The part that cooks is an inductor that looks like a resistor, on our motor that burned up we simply cut it out, soldered a piece of copper wire in where it used to be and epoxied the motor shut (we were having difficulties getting the back plates out due to the tiny tabs so we just used tin snips to cut the tabs off) not competition legal but near identical performance without cooking.

[Don Wright]

"what have you found in your searches so far?

I haven't really started looking seriously yet... That is this weekends project.

The part that cooks is an inductor that looks like a resistor, on our motor that burned up we simply cut it out, soldered a piece of copper wire in where it used to be and epoxied the motor shut (we were having difficulties getting the back plates out due to the tiny tabs so we just used tin snips to cut the tabs off) not competition legal but near identical performance without cooking.

Yep...done that a few times already. But if I can get a bunch of $1-$5 motors, that is much easier...

[Chris is me]

Does anyone have the specs on the motor with the gearhead removed? We kind of need that as a start.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Don,
As I was going home a few days ago, a motor manufacturer's truck went screaming by me. When I looked up, painted on the side of the truck was a motor that looked exactly like the Tetrix motor. I was trying to stay on the road so I didn't get a good look at the name but the address was in one of the northern suburbs of Chicago. Have you tried contacting Pitsco/Tetrix? If I was them, I would like to know there was second source on motors to turn to for production.

Also check out Precision Microdrives. https://secure.precisionmicrodrives.com/product_info.php?products_id=165&osCsid=834f8b46a01b6307731282002218fc0c

Al

[Duncan Macdonald]

What we've had some success with is taking 2 burned out motors and shorting where the inductor used to be. The motor still behaves similarly and as long as you don't burn up the coils they are a little more resilient.

[Richard Wallace]

Does anyone have the specs on the motor with the gearhead removed? We kind of need that as a start.I posted some test data for the Tetrix DC Drive Motor without its gearhead here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=999528#post999528).

An engineer where I work has been using a similar motor (http://www.databitz.com/Resources/DC-HG37Fspec.pdf) for some product development testing.

[IKE]

Was anybody able to find the cheapo development version?

[Don Wright]

Unfortunately, I haven't yet. Not only has my research time been limited, but most of the places that I'm looking don't list good specs on the motors for comparison and I am coming to the conclusion it would take a lot of ordering and testing just to hopefully find one close and I am not sure I have the time for that...

[IKE]

Unfortunately, I haven't yet. Not only has my research time been limited, but most of the places that I'm looking don't list good specs on the motors for comparison and I am coming to the conclusion it would take a lot of ordering and testing just to hopefully find one close and I am not sure I have the time for that...

I looked through several sources on the weekend. Some seemed to have motors of similar dimensions, but the power level was off. I may have found some good future sources for COTS gearboxes though:

http://kinmore.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-50126440/Gear_Motor.html#products

http://www.kysanelectronics.com/product_class_search.php

Looks like you can get teh full family of "banebots" motors with gearboxes for a pretty good price. I wonder if their 775s have shorts as well.