[JeremyLansing]

This year at Wisconsin we had a drivetrain issue in our last match before lunch. When we tried to drive forward power to one side of the drivetrain would only be applied intermittently. Since I thought it was a control issue I offered to stay in the pits and try to find it while everyone else got lunch. After I powered up the robot, I realized it was actually a gearbox issue. Myself and another mentor took apart the entire left side of our drivetrain and found that nobody had greased the gears, so during a pushing match, the already worn teeth had stripped off about 3/4 of the gear. Luckily we had some steel gears with us and were able to replace them and got them greased, the other side had been greased but we changed them out for steel and regreased any way.

Once some students got back we finished and reassembled the drive, but we basically did a complete rebuild of our drivetrain over lunch. Now people seem to think that aluminum gears are too weak for FRC, even though these held up for 1 1/2 regionals with NO GREASE. I am quite impressed they managed to hold up that long, and I am quite certain that aluminum gears, if grease properly are more than sufficient for FRC. I only wish I had a photo of all the shavings we dumped out of that Toughbox, it was quite hilarious.