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Re: New Products for 2016: Speculation, Wants
I am surprised by the complaints related to VersaPlanetaries. I would agree that they are noisy, but I've found them to be incredibly robust while providing a wealth of gearing options.
2013 and prior, Team 20 used Banebots Planetaries (P60s) or Andymark Gearmotors as a planetary solution. The gearmotors were really quite heavy and had limited available ratios. The Banebot Planetaries at the time had sintered gears. Over time after proper assembly, mounting, and loading the gears would still be pulverized into powder. The gearboxes would seize up and we would open them to find our gears were worn to shreds and the grease had metal powder suspended in it. In 2013 we even designed our collector subassembly to be quick change so we could swap out the whole thing in under 5 minutes. This was after a poor experience in 2012 where I probably spent 10 hours over the course of the season replacing BB P60s (poor design for maintenance also to blame).
I still haven't seen a single VersaPlanetary stop working with proper assembly and when mounted and loaded properly.
I do know that in 2014 when we selected Team 229 at the Tech Valley Regional their collector had not been working in their final qualification match. Their VersaPlanetary gearbox had seized up and stopped working, but I knew we had replacements in our pit, so we picked them anyway with the last pick of the draft. When we went to put the new gearbox and motor on their robot, I noted that the mounting of the gearbox was not rigid at all and we were able to work on a modification together that to my knowledge worked for the rest of the season. The sloppiness of their original mount led to strange shock loads in the gearbox due to oscillating tension on the sprocket driven by the gearbox. This highlights how important mounting and loading are the to gearbox functionality.
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[2017-present] FRC 0020 - The Rocketeers
[2016] FRC 5811 - BONDS Robotics
[2010-2015] FRC 0020 - The Rocketeers
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