[DampRobot]

VEX Pro 3 CIM Ball Shifters

I had a more mixed experience than T^2 with the ball shifters.

First, I didn't find them as nearly easy to maintain as he did. I consider myself pretty good at figuring out how stuff goes together, and pretty good at fixing things, but I found these gearboxes a bear to maintain. It took two pretty smart guys two full days with my help (and the instructions) to assemble these gearboxes. I don't remember other gearboxes taking so long to go together. A lot of it is there are a lot of different fasteners that need to go into the gearbox, and another big part is that things have go together in a very specific, non-obvious way. If you put it together wrong, you suddenly have to take the whole thing apart again, all because you forgot to put a tiny nut into the inside of the casing in step 7.

Also, they fell apart on us a lot. Over the course of the season, the screws inside of the casing that hold on the encoders or pancakes worked their way out. We had to fix each several times over the course of the season, despite loctiting and tightening as much as possible. It wouldn't be that big of a deal on an open gearbox, except you have to take the whole darn thing apart to get to those two tiny screws because it's a closed gearbox. Also, they're pretty sensitive to the screws holding the case together being overtighened. I remember having to rebuild one side of our comp drivetrain on ship day because it was binding. Turned out that one of the screws holding the casing together was just a tad overtightened, which killed our efficiency on one side of the drivetrain.

The ball shifting is nice. I like it. I wish the shifter cone was a bit nicer, maybe metal like the WCP ones used to be instead of the two side plastic casing it is now.

I liked having a lot of ratio options, and the quality of the gears was very good.

I agree, this gearbox really isn't designed around WCDs.

I'm advising my team next year to go with the 2 CIM DSes. They're a lot smaller, we haven't had reliability problems with them in the past, and they're a ton easier to service. Finally, they're really designed to do a WCD, instead of adapted to work for it.

VersaPlanetaries

This is probably one of the best products ever to hit the FRC market. It's a planetary that just works, and has a ton of options. It's really revolutionized how we build manipulators. I especially love the dual input VersaPlanetary, it's an awesome way to build a crazy powerful arm/whatever really simply.

Pulleys and Belts

Like a lot of teams, we had problems with snapping the belts. I believe this is a MFG issue (and if so, something VP NEEDS to fix), but if it isn't I at least hope were told better load rating specs for these belts. We shouldn't have to worry about belts snapping in something as critical as the drivetrain.

Other than that, it was nice to have hex broached pulleys and an easy way to get belts and pulleys.

VersaWheels

I have mixed feelings. It's nice to be able to replace wheels instead of retreading them (because dealing with tread is a PITA). The wheels have a really great traction right out of the box. On the other hand, they wear extremely quickly, to the point where if we had the supplies, I'd want us to change them out every three matches or so. Also, once they're worn, they have essentially no sideways traction, so they absolutely suck once you get T-boned (thanks 971!). The DTs wear slower and have better sideways traction, but don't have as much forward traction as a new VersaWheel OG.

I'm going to tell my team to do blue nitrile wheels again next year. They are a pain to tread, but don't wear as quick, and have grip to spare.

Hex Spacers

Who knew such a dinky little product could become so useful? I essentially never design in spacers now, I just trust the kids to find the right combo of spacers/VP hex shaft collars to work without any custom design/lathe work.

CAMs

Are the bomb.