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Unread 20-03-2011, 20:56
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AKA: Andrew Palardy (Most people call me Palardy)
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Re: Window Motor locking up

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Fultz View Post
My understanding is that the thermal break is a safety feature - these are really window motors, and if part of someone was caught in the window as it was being rolled up, this thermal break would cause the motor to stop to avoid a worse injury.
Cars don't stop providing power to the motors when they hit their end stops. They just stall the motor. So, if you hold the button long enough, you will trip the PTC and won't be able to move the window for a little while. Try it. It's fun (not really...).


We are running 2 window motors on the wrist joint of our elevator. On our practice bot they share a Victor (to save $), and we run the practice robot for about 2 hours per day (about 1 hour of actual driving, the rest is changing batteries, programming, and talking about fixes and additions).

No issues from us, however if we do manage to trip the PTC, then the two window motors will jam each other. We learned our lesson, and wrote code to prevent stalls.

As for a more powerful motor, you could use a Dewalt drill trans (see the Nothing But Dewalts whitepaper here). A Banebots RS550 motor has exactly the same mounting as a Fisher-Price.
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