Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

Also, also, were you getting the same symptoms with the 6" wheels? Why'd you switch away from those? We're running:
- 2x -0673 FPs (~600W)
- CIM-SIM direct drive
- 2x 6" AM performance wheels
- ~1.5" compression

We're getting pretty good distance out of this setup, shooting from the key at about 70% drive on the motors.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

• 2 9015's
• 2 CIM-Sims through 2 Gates belts with no reduction
• 4X 8" past KOP wheels
• ~1.5" compression
• 60° launch angle

It's working great for us. I think we need 50-60% to shoot from the key. We keep our gearboxes nice and greased. Grease would fly if you added anymore.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

The 6" actually worked a little bit better then the 4", we switched to the 4" on Saturday morning to try it and it we actually took a step back. We had a mentor from the GatorZillas come over and he said we had way to much compression early, as in when the ball first hits, and not enough on exit; this was with the 6" in. So we tried switching to a smaller wheel to try to counter that. We cant just turn the hood around, otherwise we would have done that.

The 6" wheel is the AM white plastic hard wheel, and the 4" is the plastic one that was on the FIRST Choice list.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

Our team is using Cim-Sims with the 9015 motors, one on each gear box. But we have a shooter with two pairs of wheels with one gear box for each pair of wheels. The hood drag is too great in your design. The wheels may have sufficient linear velocity, but the the hood is keeping the ball from getting up to speed. In short, there probably is a lit of slippage of the wheels against the ball.

With our design, we have four 5 3/4 in diameter by 3/4 in. aluminum wheels in our shooter. Two disks to a axle. Once we spin up, the balls move through with very little decrease in speed of the wheels. We shoot 32 ft. with an arc 16 ft. high.

I'd look at ways to cut down on the drag in the hood.

Dr. Bob

Chairman's Award is not about building the robot. Every team builds a robot.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

Your problem with the 6" wheels may have been too much compression too quickly. Your problem with the 4" wheels is definitely the lack of compression through most of your shooter. I understand that you can't flip the hood around or anything at this point. I think you still have options for increasing your exit compression now that you have 4" wheels. You need to make up a liner for the exit side of your hood. This can probably be a piece of lexan that fits inside the hood, and a few spacers made of wood or something that push the lexan away from the hood and closer to your wheel, increasing your compression. You might also benefit from friction tape on your wheels to make them grippier, and I still recommend a flywheel or heavier wheels so you can store up energy and your wheels can maintain a higher speed as the ball goes through.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

I don't think you will be able to swap your Andy-Mark 9015 motors (am-0912) for the Bane-Bot motors because the output shaft dimensions are different. I have both sitting in front of me and can see that the output shafts are different. The Bane Bot output shaft is significantly shorter in length. Note that the Bane-Bot 550's I have in hand have been recently ordered (new for 2012). YMMV (your mileage may vary).

I am also seconding Kevin's suggestion above for the additional flywheel on your bottom wheels. We added this on Saturday to produce significantly more ball spin. Cavaet - not fully tested.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

How long to the shafts really need to be? Our -0673 shafts were way too long to easily get 100% engagement anyways. I think you could get the Banebots motors to work fairly easily.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

We are using 2 BB RS550s, Cim-Sim, 26:17 chain increase driving 2 8 in. wheels. We can easily shoot from the top of the key, and even sink the bottom basket while on the bridge.
The 550s easily have enough shaft to engage the pinions. The key is to mount them with a set screw or Loctite 609 retaining compound (or similar product), or both.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

Is that 26:17 is that the teeth on each sprocket? and by what you have stated guessing it speeds is up to a decent speed? We had a 32 tooth to a 12 tooth speed increase and the best we could get was during autonomous, place the robot back wheels touching the free throw and could hit the front corner of the fender.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

We have been using a Banebot Cim-U-lator with the dual 550 motor setup.
We have adjacent dual 8" AM gray urethane wheels on a 5/8" shaft with a 1:1 ratio 30 tooth pulley pair drive. The balls are pinched against a mostly flat 1/4" plywood sheet with its surface covered by high friction shelf liner.
The plywood is slightly bent at entry end to give a funnel shape. We have been able to shoot initially 40+ feet before we started having gearbox and/or motor troubles.

We did install spacers for maintaining airflow between the 550 motors and their gearboxes, using large 3/8" steel washers cut into a 4-lobe spider to match the vent & mount holes there.

We were initially burning up the 550 motors from a having a bad wire terminal connection arcing issue.

After that was fixed, we are still destroying the 550 bearing at the pinion gear end of the 550 shaft (two already). We broke in our gearboxes gradually before loading them, even changing grease after 1 hour.. They were running cool during the break in stage with everything spinning at full speed. Any ideas why motor bearing would self destruct so quickly -- 30 min to 90min of use and less than 100 shots?

We are converting today to the single 775 motor setup of the Cim-U-lator and testing for how much distance/RPM we lose from the fact that 775 is an 18V motor running at 12V. We can regear for more RPM if necessary, but we hope this larger motor can handle whatever the shaft loading issue is that is killing the 550 motor's front bearings. Any ideas why the 550 bearing nearest gearbox would be getting thoroughly chewed up so fast?

Which allowed AM motor(s) used this year with CIM-sim gearboxes are giving good distance for shooters?, and will any AM motors match up properly with the dual motor CIM-U-lator gearbox, as far as motor mounting and shaft diameter (in order to use same pinion gears as fit the 550 shaft)?

-Dick Ledford

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

Ok, so having had similar problems I think I can shed some light for you.

There are a few factors that go into the shooter:

1. Shooter wheel surface speed
2. Shooter intake compression
3. Shooter exit compression
4. shooter contact distance
5. Shooter Inertia

It sounds to me like with both the 6" and 4" wheels your surface speed should be about on target so I'm going to jump over this section.

From your description you say the intake to the shooter wheel has more compression then the exit. this causes almost all of the energy to go into compressing the ball very quickly in order to "suck" the ball down into your shooter. This expends a HUGE amount of energy on relatively non-productive areas. Our shooter has less then 0.5" of compression when the ball enters it and has about 1.5"-2" (depending on tilt angle and other factors). This setup has worked a lot better for us then constant compression at any distance (and we have tested it). I would suggest moving your shooter shaft forwards so the intake is looser and the exit is tighter. This is probably the simplest solution to your problem.

Because your shooter is almost 100deg you should have no issues with the contact time with the ball. If anything there may be to much here but I seriously doubt it.

After adjusting the shaft in the hood if your wheel still bogs down then this is probably the place to look. By increasing your inertia the shooter wheels wont take as much of a hit (and my team takes almost no hit) when a ball passes though the shooter helping whit your reliability, consistency, and range.

Hope this helps,
Dan

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

Yes.

2.7 speed reduction on a 19300 rpm motor driving 8" wheels => high torque on pinion.

How much engagement was left of the pinion into the first-stage gear in the CIM-U-LATOR with those spacers?

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

May I ask, to whom are you responding? There's no context in your post, and you linked it to Dick Ledford's post to which it appears to be unrelated.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

My goal was to reply to the original was to reply to Catlin Level's questions. I haven't contributed to CD much over the past 9 and it appears I hit the wrong button.

Sorry for the confusion.

Re: Cim-Sim gearbox for shooter questions
 

For RoboCat2005: Do the motors bog down as the ball drops from above, or when the ball exits the shooter?

If it is the first, then as others have said you have too much compression on the intake. So once you actually get to shoot, the wheels have already been slowed down. More inertia on the wheel might help by allowing you to maintain a decent speed after the ball enters, but it would be better if you could decrease the amount of compression on the intake.

PS: Looks like a really neat drivetrain. How often did you end up crossing the bump?