Re: 2006: Did anyone use the Mabuchi motor?
 

This is the first time we ever used this motor.

We had a bin in the lower portion of the robot to store balls and we would use gravity to feed our ball elevator to load a rack to feed our turret/shooter.

The problem was that sometimes the bin would get jammed. We solved this by using a banebots transmission and some of round polyurethane belting which just ran in a loop. This simple mechanism was able to keep our bin jam free.

The banebots transmission isn't perfect, but we would never have used the mabuchi motor without it.

Re: 2006: Did anyone use the Mabuchi motor?
 

I imagine as the BaneBots transmission gets better known, the Mabuchis will get used more. It is too much hassle to make a custom gearbox to bring down 4000 rpms (well, depending on what the purpose is, you might not need one) especially when you consider the very lower power output, also most other solutions would be pricey or involve huge sprockets. The BaneBots is cheap, and available in multiple gear ratios, very nice. Personally, I'd be more tempted to use it to make a rotating light out of the LEDs, than to do anything else.

Re: 2006: Did anyone use the Mabuchi motor?
 

Whenever this tranny is mentioned, there is always an undertone of caution. What is the problem?

Re: 2006: Did anyone use the Mabuchi motor?
 

1) You'll need to be careful when replacing the pinion on your FP or Mabuchi motor with the BaneBots pinion -- shaft fit to the pinion i.d. is critical. I found it easiest to bore/ream/drill the pinion to a tight slip fit for the motor shaft and then use a good retaining compound like Loctite 680.

2) The gearbox gets a little noisy; some folks have found it helpful to add lubricant. Gear quality is not high, which should be expected for a gearbox at this price.

See Joe Johnson's advice here.

P.S. And several folks have had trouble with the standard assembly screws stripping easily. Joe also looked into a solution for this and found that the supplier was very helpful.