Re: Attention Robot Inspectors:
 

I hope those are your words, not FIRST's. If their's, I wonder why I called all over and drove 120 miles to get the right ones. If their's, I guess the FP service center guys had me pegged when they thought I was nuts for caring!

Re: Attention Robot Inspectors:
 

Those are my words, not anything from FIRST. As far as FIRST is concerned, the only FP motor that can be on your bot is the 9012 version.

The reason I was saying much ado about nothing is that I was worried all of the hours tuning our control loops for the arm would be brushed away if the motor performance was different after the swap. Since the motor performance is identical in our application (not near stall torque and low current) I have no concern that changing the motor will cause us to have to re-tune our system.

Thanks for the help.

RAZ

Re: Attention Robot Inspectors:
 

When we mechanically busted a FP (busted it up good!), we called our FP service center and they knew exactly what we needed. However, the gear box they had with the clearly marked correct part number had the wrong FP motor in it - a 9003 instead of a 9012. We were going to shrug our shoulders and just buy them because they were in the right gear box but our buddies in Kileen (Team #647 the CyberWolves) saved our butts and double-checked with FIRST and made sure we got the right motors.

And boy are we glad they did. While programming the robot arm one of the variables in the code wasn't quite right and we got to smell the sweet smell of a thermo cutoff switch burning off its factory coating. Fortunately for us once it cooled down the motor was as good as new! Having the 9012 versus the 9003 was a lifesaver!

-Danny

Re: Attention Robot Inspectors:
 

Ok so I've been doing a little digging and found this in the FIRST Forums, it looks like FIRST is aware of the issue and has made some type of arrangement to correct it. http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=3916
this was posted at the beginning of the month so I am not sure if this was just for build season or not but it's worth checking into. Hope it helps.

Re: Attention Robot Inspectors:
 

If by making arrangements to correct it you mean ignoring emails (at least in my personal experience), then yes.

Re: Attention Robot Inspectors:
 

FYI,
The current limit in this motor trips at well below stall current. In test we found the motor trips at about 24 amps. Since it is a thermal trip, each successive trip causes a much longer recovery.

Re: FP 9003 vs 9012 (was Attention Robot Inspectors:)
 

We also got 9003s at the manchester kickoff. It took something to the tune of 5 weeks to get a response out of FIRST, but they did finally respond saying they were sending us the correct motors, which means we have to take apart the whole assembly at Boston to replace our motors. Not a fun situation.

Re: FP 9003 vs 9012 (was Attention Robot Inspectors:)
 

Well, hopefully we were the only team that got bit by this mistake. We used 9003s in our prototype design, not thinking there was a difference. The design worked great, and we were lifting 160 pound bots on our ramps with no problems in our lab. Thursday morning at the Phoenix Regional, a student reminded us we had to use the 9012s so we made a quick swap out on the bot, thinking there would be no big deal. After the first few matches of not being able to lift anyone we were going nuts trying to figure out what happened..?? After two days of trying to figure it out, we realized that the current limiter was cutting us off on any bot over about 100 pounds. That being said, our primary design/plan of lifting 2 bots per match securing 60 points, got us 0 bots per match. We were dead in the water and useless at the Phoenix regional because of it. Just a valuable lesson for anyone trying to lift bots or making any last minute switches on these motors.

~Shea~