[Al Skierkiewicz]

I make recommendations based on motor design. If your design goal is based on getting a full 12 volts to the motor, then you need to increase the size of the wire feeding the controller and the motor and then make them as short as possible. The rule of thumb I came up with is the "wire foot". 1 foot of #10 wire passing 100 amps will drop 0.1 volt. So if you have a CIM motor that you expect to run in the high current part of the motor curve, and feed the motor controller with 1 foot wires and then the CIM motor has 1 foot wires, that is a total of 4 feet of wire. (Remember the red and black wires carry the same current.) So that is 4 wire feet, 0.4 volt drop. Add 4 wire feet for a Jag or Talon, 6 for a Victor and your design curve CIM is now running at 11.2 volts on a good day neglecting any loss in the #6 and PDB. So as these losses start to add up, you can guess why some electrical designs cause robots to drive anything but straight. 4 feet of wire on one drive train compared to a few inches on the other side, unbalances the current sent to both sides. You cannot drive straight unless you compensate for the imbalance.