Hey Andrew,
You'll be hard pressed to find someone why ran those gearboxes as hard as you guys did.
I think you guys were using the versa's outside of their intended use. Running them in a drive-train is a bit much, even without a fully weighted frc spec robot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EC0T...ature=youtu.be
The "mini bot" had no bumpers and was bashed around, with the wheels sticking out past the frame it's just begging to give the versaplanetary an extra pounding. I've heard this thing does back flips against the chain link fence, which is awesome and all, but just imagine the shock load that those gearboxes went through!
I was over when you were doing some maintenance, I recall the CIM wiggling around as it ran. A full sized CIM CAN run in the versa planetary, it's not *intended* to, but it is possible. If you do plan to put that much weight on the little planetary gears it is important to support the weight, and to make sure they are mounted as securely as possible. When I saw the gearbox assembly there was about 1/16 of play between motor and versa planetary
. You
really need those 5 pounds hanging off the end of the gearbox installed as snug as possible.
I don't mean to scold you in any way, but you guys were kind of asking for it. Something had to give, those little pins took the blunt of it.
For future reference, here is the versa planetary loading guide, note how the mini cim and cim are absent from tables, just means you have to be extra careful.
http://content.vexrobotics.com/vexpr...s_20130107.pdf
"The VersaPlanetary gearbox may fail in one of two different modes: (1) output shaft yield stress failure or (2) 10:1
carrier plate ultimate stress failure." ULTIMATE STRESS FAILURE D:>
Take this as a lesson, at least it wasn't on a competition bot. Good luck this season
