Quote:
Originally Posted by SeanFitz
So if the breaker trips, would I be better off letting it cool and then continuing on or should I try and replace it? The answer to this would factor into the placement of the electronics (I.E. how hard it is to get to each part)
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Yes, once you trip it once, it's easier to trip the second time. I've got this from personal experience, and from talking to top teams that do deal with breaker trips a lot.
Whether or not you should replace it after every trip is a difficult question to answer. I know some teams that bring a lot of breakers to competition and know they're good, so they swap it out any time they trip their breaker in a match. On the other hand, when we had to switch out a breaker, we didn't have any extras ourselves, so we had to borrow one. Bad decision. For whatever reason, the breaker we got tripped a lot more easily than the one we had replaced, even though (according to the team we borrowed it from) it was new out of the box.
At this point, I'd guess that the breakers have some Q/C issues, and top teams just test their spare breakers to make sure they're good to go before swapping them out. So, yes, already tripped breakers are easier to trip, but if you can't be sure of the quality of the breaker you're switching them with, I'd be cautious about making the swap.
In terms of placement, keep in mind that you are going to have to access the switch to turn the robot off, so you don't want it in some crazy hard to get to place anyway. On the other hand, you do want really short wire runs between the battery, the breaker, and the PDB to minimize resistance, which usually means putting the breaker in the middle of the robot (which can be harder to get to). So, like most things in engineering, it's a tradeoff.