There are also S-B locations here:

Farmington Hills, MI: 248-476-7788
somewhere, CA: 714-779-4900

Toward the end of this year's season, I bought some motors from the California location, since the other two were out of stock.

Andy B.

I think that overall we liked the new motors. They are very finicky in how you mount them and how you handle the wiring.

Thanks to the FIRST community here, I was able to warn our rookies to BE CAREFUL when handling them and give advance notice of some of the potential problems.

I think that if we see them again next year, they will be no big deal. The weaknesses are known and fixes for them are widely available, at least to CD readers.

Every time you change something major like the drive motors there will be a bit of a learning curve. It will take a year or two for people to get the bugs worked out. I think these have been pretty well wrung out now.

That said, I do wish the brush assemblies were a little more rugged. Other than that I have no complaints.

BTW we disassembled the tranny, removed the clutch and installed our own output shaft, before reassembling them. That may have reduced some of our problems.

Drill motors
 

We liked them although we did encounter problems.
1. the mounts didn't keep the entire assembly together from end-to-end as the drill handles do (clutch causes separation)
2. the mounts didn't keep the last output section from spinning and breaking the bayonet mount connection between gearbox sections.

We used them with the FIRST gearbox and misalignment coupling. We found these were helpful and they did not break.

drill motors
 

Per post #32.
Most teams did not modify the output section & clutch because this was explictly forbidden by the rules.

Re: drill motors
 

Not true.

Motors cannot be modified. However, the Bosch gearbox can surely be modified (see section 2.4 in "the Robot" and rule M15)

The F-P, Bosch and globe motor gearboxes are not considered an "integral part" of the motor, and therefore can be altered modified or removed entirely from the motor.

Andy B.

Re: drill motors
 

Thank's Andy,

I was checking my post in reply when I saw your response. I like your's better than what I wrote. Mostly because you cited the rules in question and I don't have the rule book handy. Besides, I was way too wordy.

Chris

I personally loved the new drill motors. They had plenty of power and we never once had a problem with over-heating. THough we did have to change out like 6 or 7 of the mounts and trashed about 6 couplers. We also had a problem with the wires becoming disconected from the brushes with a small tug of the wire but beside those few thing the motors were excelent. I say give 4 or 6 in the kit next year. I also saw one team who overheated the motors and as a resault the plastic casing the holds the brushes in melted. But we helped them fix it with zip ties. The mounts were a different story though. Get rid of them they are crap. Keep the gear boxes though they were good

I could have sworn I already posted in here...

I loved the new drills. They worked great for us. Most of the trouble seems to have come from teams using all the supplied stuff. We did the same thing we did last year, and dint have a single problem with them until the brushes fell out after around 20 matches.

Cory

Why am I thinking that our team is the only team that did not have horrendous problems with this years drill motors and kit that FIRST gave us?

Adam,

Would you mind telling me how you used them on your robot, so that I can figure out what you did right and make improvements to my teams robot next year. THanx

Hehe We just used them like they were supposed to in the kit. Almost exactly like it though and we never destroyed a drill motor. Now that I remeber correctly we did have one problem with a drill but that was my fault and it was easily fixed. I installed the drill motor wrong.
Yowser. Thats what we encountered. It is not the mounts. It is the drills. They are not installed correctly. If installed correctly you should experience no problems in using those mounts.

What's with everyone wanting more drill motors? Okay, they're the best motor, but think about it...

If we were given 4 drills, that would mean 2 horsepower robots. If you added the cippies, 2.75 horses. That is insane power. Rookie teams who don't have the experiance to join multiple motors will be left in the dust. FIRST wants to put limits on teams with crazy tech skills so they don't slaughter other teams. Last year if you used the drills, chippies, and FP motors, you only got about 2 HP. Its not that much an advantage for all the extra weight and hard work you need to make it work. Notice that you can't use titanium or beryllium? That's so rich teams don't make a super-light, indestructible robot. FIRST tries to make it fair to all teams, so even a rookie team still has a chance to win.

Also, adding motors here requires motors to dissapear somewhere else. A robot isn't only drive train. Some teams just have a simple drive train, and an intricate object manipulator system. What motor would you sacrifice? Many teams never use the FP motors, but what about teams that do? How would you make crazy 6 motor drive trains be hard to make? Technocats did it with 3 different types of motors. If we get 2 more drills, so many more teams are going to do the same, but with less effort. And in the end, the Technocats will just make something even better, and the rookie teams will suffer. Not saying that all rookie teams are technologically incoherent, just look at Harker (team 1072).

Just because a team is a rookie doesn't mean they can't have a multi-motor drivetrain. They can actually be made quite simply. And if you put your mind to it, anything can be made possible. Not to mention there is the immense support from those on here, like me.

Teams want more drill motors because they are very easy to mount compared to the Atwoods, they have a shaft that can easily be coupled to another shaft with gears/sprockets on it, and they can be shifted with fairly little fabrication of other parts.

If I remember correctly, Beryllium is radioactive, which would have nothing to do with making a lighter stronger robot, but with health hazards. I dont know why you would want to use Beryllium anyways.

Cory

That's not the point. FIRST wants to give you a challenge, not a walk in the park. And if I remember correctly, beryllium can be used to make extremely strong and light alloys of aluminum, at a relatively small cost compared to making other alloys. And it isn't radioactive.