[Jon Stratis]

One point I haven't seen on here... try to avoid a situation where you're driving around with the motor stalled most of the time! The way we had our elevator set up 2 seasons ago, we had to be driving it down in order to pick up tubes. As a result, most of the match it was either stalled going down as we went after tubes, or stalled going up as we attempted to hang. We ended up burning out a lot of FP motors that year! There is some debate between myself and another mentor as to the reason for the burn out... he thinks it was due to friction in the elevator, making the motor work more to raise/lower, while I think it was due to the motor being almost constantly stalled!

All that said, counterbalancing any moving part, whether linear or rotary, isn't necessary in our applications... but it is a simple tool to use to get increased speed at a decreased effort!