Motors for harvester
 

After the season has finish our team wants to make some changes to our robot. We were using a cim on our harvester but want to try out a new way to power it. So we wondering if any team can let us know how they power their harvester like what motor, gear ratio any information is helpful. Thanks.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

We used an Andymark Gearmotor dircetly driven to our rollers. We found that it was a bit slow though, so we would reccomend a Banebots RS550 with a 26:1 gearbox.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

we have some rs550 with 16:1 gear ratio do you think that will work.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

We used a AM PG71 gearbox with a Banebot 550.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

Did you have to modify anything to put the banebot motor on the gearbox.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

Our intake roller and ball elevator were driven together, all by a BaneBots 550 through a 16:1 gearbox and a short chain run. The bottom roller was 2" originally; we did add tape between the grooves to build up their depth, so the effective diameter may have been bigger.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

Was it fast or medium type speed our rollers are 2" with the roughtop tread between the polycord

Re: Motors for harvester
 

Are initial fast-sucker stage was a 550 with a 16:1 and it worked perfectly with a 1.5 inch pvc roller direct driven.

Our vertical stage was a 550 with a 64:1 directly driven.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

For lack of a proper measurement: Fast enough. We had to stop our elevator between shots for our shooter wheel to get back to speed.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

we used a 16:1 Banebots RS775 in our latest version roller that worked extremely well.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

Did you chain it or direct drive it. If chained did you run a 1:1 gear ratio

Re: Motors for harvester
 

What's more important than the gear ratio is the linear speed of the contact point. That's the end all comparison really.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

How can we get the best linear speed. Whats the best ball squeeze. We have a 2 inch squeeze although it work well for us we could never hold more then 2 balls because it would jam. Any suggest.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

AndyMark sells a spacer to adapt the motor or you can shorten the output shaft. The spacer is easier. They also sell the gear you need.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

Thanks we are trying different options to see what gives us the best result. Thank you for the information. I'll pass it on to our build team.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

We ran 2 in compression too, with a 2 in roller. While we used two 16:1 banebots 550, it was way overkill. We actually ended up switching out our motors for our elevator for LA elims to one 16:1 banebots 550, and it was really perfect. I personally would have geared our pickup up a bit, because it seemed quite good, but not as effective as if we had made it faster. If you have the ability to make a custom gearbox, I think two 550s in a 8:1 or 10:1 gearbox would be perfect. If not, revert to 1 550 in a 16:1.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

How did you keep it from getting jammed. Since we only had a one stage system it would get jammed when it got to the shooter. We are planning to run a two stage pick up system.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

I don't know how your harvester is set up, so this may or may not help. We made a single stage gearbox for a Fisher Price motor, then used chain drive to run a roller. The round urethane belting goes up to an idler roller at the top. Ball compression is kind of low at the bottom, maybe an inch, and increase as the balls go up, so they pop out the back at the top.

The gearbox was easy for us to make. We used an older FP gearbox first stage gear, and a 3/8" hex shaft with the ends machined round to fit into the flanged bearings. We just measured carefully and drilled the holes in the Lexan using a drill press. The ball moves about 4 feet up in about a second, which is what we designed it to do. To figure out the gear and chain ratios, we started with that one second time requirement, then figured the needed belt speed. We used that to figure out the gear and chain reduction needed to get the roller to spin that fast based on the no load RPM of the motor, allowing for about 20% speed reduction when it's run with load.


We had zero problems with the mechanism through two regionals.

Re: Motors for harvester
 

I'm not really sure what you mean. We ran two stages though, and balls never got jammed. If I had to do all of the gearboxes over again, I would go with 16:1 for the elevator(one 550) and 8:1 for the pickup(two 550s).

Re: Motors for harvester
 

If the linear speed of your harvester at the contact point matches or exceeds the max speed of your robot's drive, you should have no problems. We used a quarter inch to half inch of compression throughout our collector/conveyor system. Essentially what you want is enough compression that you can reliably grab balls, including within reason any balls with deformities, and no more. Any additional compression is just putting unnecessary load on your motors, which can stall them. This stalling of your motors could be what you are observing as jamming.

We ran the 180ish watt FPs with 1 16:1 planetary gearbox on them to drive our 2.5 inch diameter rollers. At about 1000 rpm free speed at 2.5 inches, it exceeded our robots max speed of about 10 ft/s.