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Unread 26-09-2014, 22:27
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JesseK JesseK is offline
Expert Flybot Crasher
FRC #1885 (ILITE)
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Re: 8 MINI-CIM SWERVE

Quote:
Originally Posted by nuclearnerd View Post
For me too, but If another team decides they would rather have all 40A circuits going to the drive, and only use lower power circuits for the rest of the bot, why should the rules keep them from making that trade-off on their own?
Drive trains are easy to build. Without understanding the fundamentals, drive trains are very hard to perfect as part of a greater robot with other mechanisms. I feel that increasing the amount of power through to the drive trains is a cop-out low & mid-tier teams who don't bother to try to perfect their drive train. I'd much rather the GDC limit total electric power through the drive train if there were any rule changes in that respect. It would force the trade-offs to be actual engineering decisions rather than "BIGGER IS BETTER RAWR!1".

On top of that, I feel that anyone who mentions 6 CIMs as what led to success in an anecdote should have a gigantic caveat stickied across their post. I don't know about the exact wording, but perhaps it could say something like
Quote:
Dear FRC participant, 6 CIM drive trains (or 8 MiniCIMs) may lead to some nice zippy acceleration if you "like to go fast". Yet here are some side effects you should consult your robot engineers about:
  • Your drivers keep getting penalties for high-speed ramming
  • Your robot "passes out" for about 30 seconds after getting into a pushing match
  • Your batteries from last year's competition no longer hold a charge for the entire match
  • Your other motor-driven subsystems are noticeably slower towards the end of a match
  • The tread constantly strips off of your wheels when merely grazing another robot
  • Your aluminum output shaft shears
  • The chains snap apart at the master link or eat the teeth off of the sprockets after a quick reverse
These were witnessed, BTW.

Full disclosure, 1885 took a beating by powerful drivetrains at champs this past year. Getting double-teamed as a single-speed 11ft/s drive train got very aggravating very quickly. We endured, had some great matches and I know what to do for next year. We even had our very first actual zero-maintenance and very agile drive train this year across 4 competitions. Hopefully I've presented this in such as way that shows more thought has gone into it based upon several years of drive train design experience, rather than a single competition's worth of bias.

Last edited by JesseK : 26-09-2014 at 22:34.