I thought that other teams might be interested in this hack:
When building our winch, we found that we needed to lose 1/2" of width in order to fit it in our scaler (a consequence of not modelling fasteners - ah well). To find the room, we moved the VEX encoder stage from the versaplanetary to the winch axle by printing a new "hex bore gear" for the encoder. The result worked so well we moved the encoder on our "battering ramp" too using the same trick (see attached photos).
You can find all of the CAD files you need to produce your own hex-bore encoders here. Feel free to use them, and share your results with us!
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1473056
Related story: maybe we're cursed, but we've had so much trouble with encoders over the years:
- In 2014 (previous team) the plastic gears slipped in the (V1) shaft of the ballshifters. *Sigh*
- In 2015 the rotor clamp kept slipping, and the cable kept popping out of the CUI AMT encoders. *Facepalm*
- In 2016 we tried CIMcoders, but found they keep losing counts (despite several attempts to debug and repair - still don't know what the issue is). *Temper tantrum*
So after we got knocked out during quarters at Waterloo (congrats again 1241, 610 and 3560) we took the time to mount hex-bore encoders on our live axles (photo attached). We'll see at champs if they finally provide us with a rock solid drive encoder solution, and a chance to score in auto. (Now if only we could have talon data cables longer than 6"!)