Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan 1038
We have had a few issues of smoking the motors at stall, but a 10A fuse appears to have fixed that... Concerning the free fall shock breaking the motors, I highly recommend that you consider shunting the motors when you hit the top, this will significantly slow the fall. Simply add a switch, like a 3 way light switch (SPDT), which can switch the + of the motors from the + of the battery to the - leg of the motors when it hits the top. That way, the motors act as generators for themselves, which should create enough drag to keep the minibot intact when it lands. It works!
|
I'm not sure about the fuses, as we have the motors connected directly to the battery. Does the motor have an internal fuse (sorry, I don't know much about the motors themselves)? As far as the "shunting" goes, I'm not sure I completely understand, as I know very little about electrical stuff like that. However, we do have a switch that gets flipped when the minibot hits the top of the pole that turns the motors off, so they are simply spinning freely on the way down. We cushion the fall with knotted surgical tubing attached to an aluminum L-bracket bumper. The design works well, except for the fact that we keep breaking the transmissions in the motors, which causes the gears to lock and burn out both motors (we have 2-motor rear wheel drive). We are having difficulty figuring out how to slow the descent; right now, we have a sort of ratchet system that locks the unpowered front wheels on the way down, which does make a significant difference, but it is still not enough.