[EricH]

Originally Posted by Tassemet

Well, I have access to a lot of electronics measurement things here, whether I can borrow them or not though....

If it's an inductor that blows, that's an easy fix provided I know enough about it (size, resistance values etc.) to replace it.

Also, I didn't know those motors will blow out under a low load at a high RPM, it seems strange unless they were running them full out/overloading the motor. In that case, yeah. There's actually a forum where I pulled the exact specs on the power of the motor. Again from my post above, running them at maximum power seems to be the way to go.

Quite a few FRC teams had a lot of trouble finding those inductors. I think someone did find a pretty close substitute; it's slightly larger than the one there. (The other option, at $30 a pop, was to replace the motor.)

I'm pretty certain that the FRC teams were running at full power to go up the pole (the entire idea was to get up the pole as fast as possible). If you have a heavier load than the pole-climbers, you'll almost certainly blow out inductors, repeatedly.