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Unread 29-07-2015, 18:33
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thefro526 thefro526 is offline
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AKA: Dustin Benedict
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Re: General Motor Rules

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Hill View Post
I'm curious, is there some written standard for 500/700 series motors? All I've found are actual Mabuchi part numbers as well as other motors claiming to be 500/700 series motors for RC toys. (Or did Mabuchi just set the standard?)
Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamHeard View Post
I've never sought one out, but i'm sure it exists.
I did some digging and wasn't able to find a comprehensive standard that covered any given series of Mabuchi motor, but it looks like it'd be simple enough to allow any motor with a Mabuchi part number of of "RS-3XX", ,RS-5XX" or "RS7XX" to be used in FRC, since we've already seen these motors in the KOP (virtual KOP?) at least once.

Personally, and this is only my opinion, the motor rules as currently written, and previously written (at least as long as I've been in FRC) - dont work. I've seen at least two or three robots a season - usually at events where you've got a lot of "one and done" teams, that use illegal motors, usually something from a previous KOP.

I honestly can only think of one time where any inspector ever cared about motors to the point where they checked part numbers, and that was back in 09 - there were three or four RS500 motors at could be used... (Only one of them made sense... We did not use that one) so the inspectors knew to verifying part numbers.

We're almost at a cross road, either limit the motor rules, specifically to CIMs, Mini-CIMs, Bags, 500 cans (AM-9015?) and 700's (AM PG series?). At that point, between the visual uniqueness of the CIM family compared to most other motors, it's hard to mistake one motor for another, and AM has a colorful enough label that it jumps out. (Although RS775-18's are awesome, someone make a colorful label.)

The alternative would be to limit max power win an open(ish) motor list. I think this actually may solve the problem, at least for the most part - but you still run into instances where the same motor may have different specs depending on the vendor - not to mention that you'll have a handful of teams ripping apart drills and other tools to pull motors out, with no real way of verifying the specs.

IMO, in a perfect world, motor allotment is any combination of CIM's, Mini-CIM's, BAGs and RS-series motors under a total of ~3.5-4kw of power. After that point, if you're really using all of that, your batteries will rarely last a match, which creates more problems than it solves, obviously. It also forces teams to make smart decisions about where to use power and where not, rather than the current "all CIM everything". (Although a 3.5kw cap does not prevent one from doing all CIM everything, it just limits what they can do with that mentality.)
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-Dustin Benedict
2005-2012 - Student & Mentor FRC 816
2012-2014 - Technical Mentor, 2014 Drive Coach FRC 341
Current - Mentor FRC 2729, FRC 708