Quote:
Originally Posted by GreyingJay
The first day we did a drive practice session, we kept going and going and going, swapping out batteries as needed. Nobody was thinking too much about motor heat or letting the robot rest. Eventually we noticed the smell. Someone described it as smelling like yoghurt. I ascribe it to burning plastic. Knowing where it was likely coming from, we turned our robot upside down and, sure enough, the four CIM motors were extremely hot.
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We learned a similar lesson about motors and gearboxes after our first district this year. We used to have a four bar linkage with a U shape on the top formed by two prongs on the driver and follower arms, and the coupler link (I have a close up of the arm in our reveal video). Given how tricky the arm was to operate at our first district, we decided to take it off. Before we had gotten to removing the arm, the drive team was practicing with the robot and ended up burning out the Mini CIM attached to it because one of the limit switches had failed. After removing the arm, doing a bit of research, and testing the arm again, we concluded that the motor had gotten so hot that it boiled (or just heated to a high temperature, I was in the shop when this happened) the lithium grease inside of the Banebots gearbox it was attached to.
Long story short, cooling CIMs is probably a good idea in between tight matches, and CIMs are tough motors, they're pretty hard to burn out.