[tjump]

Hi All,

There are several threads regarding the PW/FP gearboxes, but one thing I could not find was maximum tolerance on these gearboxes before shreading. Way back in 1999 we added steel gears to the output gear as we were all shearing off the teeth of this final output stage, but what can the inner gears handle?

I ask as we are designing other robots (non-FRC) and we are looking at motor options including the new craze with brushless motors. In general, the brushless 550 motors at 12V will be screaming at 60,000+ rpms (the Mabuchi motors that come stock with the PW/FP gearboxes usually run around 15,000 rpm). At what point would higher rpm smoke these gearboxes?

An additional direction with this query: how would running lower voltages equate to robot performance (torque) if we used lower V+ (brushless motor speed is related to input voltage and running at 6 volts would cut top end rpm to 30,000 or less depending on Kv of the motors).

Anyway, we are just trying to dig deep into motor/gearbox/battery power design to understand the relationship in all of these (several posts on other robot building sites spend a great deal of time discussing higher voltages equaling better robot motor performance... i.e. 24V systems vs. 12V systems). We want to understand how to put all of this together.

I appreciate the input.

Cheers,
Timothy Jump