[Andy Baker]

Holy cow, what a lot of trouble two motors can cause! With the addition of the Chiapua (a.ka. Chalupa, big black motor, Chippawa) motors, we have some new engineering challenges. I don't know about the rest of you, but here are some of the things I've had to to investigate for the first time since college:

1. Gear shearing strength. I'm not going to say too much here, but if you are running multiple torques of motors through a singular gear, then you better figure out now if you are gonna shear some teeth.

2. Since we may be getting close to some of these yield strengths, you may want to investigate case hardening some of your gears... We're gonna harden some stuff to Rc:50-54 (Rockwell) to keep it tough.

3. Watch out for driving output shafts on wimpy 1/4" (or 3/8"??) shafts... Some of the shafts that teams have used in the past may not be strong enough for the torque available in this year's kit.

4. Speaking of torque and shafts, watch the load rating of your bearings. Some of these bearings have static load ratings that are lower than the tangental force being applied to the wheels. I'm not sure how severe this will be, since I just started looking into this today, but we better. Some 3/8" shafts may need to be enlarged to 1/2", depending on just how much bangin' will be going on in the Zones.

5. Budget your weight alottment for bumpers. While bumpers were a joke in 2000, this year things will be nasty. With the ability for robots to go TWICE the speed of last year's game, parts will fly.

Now, get your nose back into that book.

Andy B.