16-07-2015, 20:51
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6th Gear Developer; Mentor
AKA: Blake Ross
no team (6th Gear)
Team Role: Mentor
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Join Date: May 2006
Rookie Year: 2006
Location: Virginia
Posts: 1,939
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Re: Stepper Motors
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oblarg
Do you think there's any chance we'll ever see steppers on the list of FRC-legal motors?
Open control loops are a whole lot easier than closed ones, and I've always felt steppers are a natural solution for a large portion of the FRC problem-space that is currently occupied by PID or bang-bang control loops.
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Focusing only on the OP - Open loop control of a stepper will only be successful in those robot locations and during those match times where/when the stepper is always stronger than the varying loads it encounters. Otherwise the stepper gets stalled, and your count history becomes useless until you correct it using some known reference.
If you count the number of places on a typical (or close enough) FRC robot where the loads on motors are always low (or close enough), and/or fully predictable (or close enough), I'll bet you come up with a short list. Those are the places where reasonably-priced (likely to be donate-able) steppers and their controllers are going to be useful.
I suggest using the steppers on your demo machines and other eye-candy, and using the alternatives during your matches.
Blake
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Blake Ross, For emailing me, in the verizon.net domain, I am blake
VRC Team Mentor, FTC volunteer, 5th Gear Developer, Husband, Father, Triangle Fraternity Alumnus (ky 76), U Ky BSEE, Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, Kentucky Colonel
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