pic: 2471's final winch assembly gear side
 

Re: pic: 2471's final winch assembly gear side
 

Color me impressed. That's a really neat little assembly.

Have you done any testing to see if you can get enough torque out of the PG-71 gearbox? In the past, we've had some problems with them failing at high torque loads.

Also, could you give us a bit more info on final ratio/load/travel/windup time/current for the system?

Re: pic: 2471's final winch assembly gear side
 

That looks nice, very well integrated components. I wouldn't worry too much about the PG71, we used two of them to lift our robot up the pyramid last year over 60 times with a 1.5" pulley. If two PG71's can dead lift 142 lbs over 450 feet in one season, I'm pretty confident that it can pull back your shooter. Then again, how much tension are you pulling back?

Re: pic: 2471's final winch assembly gear side
 

Thanks. We haven't done any testing of the torque output yet. But the numbers say that it will be more than enough power.
The 18 volt 775 stalls at 166oz-in of torque or 10.3lb-in. After a 71:1 gear reduction that's 735lb-in. Our spool only has a 0.625" radius, so under perfect conditions it should stall producing 1180lbs of force. Multiply this by a rough torque efficiency of 0.75 and you get 880lbs.

Our shooter should take less than 200lbs to retract so the motor will be running in its happy place (about 10,000rpm) which should pull our cable at about 10in/sec. So it should get the job done in a little over 1 second. Of course it's all theoretical at this point.

Re: pic: 2471's final winch assembly gear side
 

How is that ratchet released? is the tension taken off for the release?

Re: pic: 2471's final winch assembly gear side
 

Disregard, I see in the other picture you used a cylinder to slide it.

Re: pic: 2471's final winch assembly gear side
 

I think you've got the idea, except the cylinder does not directly slide the ratchet. The cylinder just disengages the spool from its shaft, so the ratchet is always engaged.

Re: pic: 2471's final winch assembly gear side
 

Interesting. Our 2 CIM worm gearbox with about an 80:1 final reduction with a 1" diameter pulley takes about 3 seconds to pull back our 130 lb shooter. I'd be interested in hearing your results when you test it on the robot.

Re: pic: 2471's final winch assembly gear side
 

We did our first tests of the system as whole today. I'd say it took about 2 seconds to retract our shooter. It measured at over 100lbs of force in its current configuration.

We did have an issue with triggering the shifter rod, but I expect that it will be fixed with some lubrication. Like one of our mentors always says "When in doubt, Lubricate!"