[AdamHeard]

Since the failure mentioned above, and since we installed plates that eliminate twist, one of our gearboxes has seized up twice (well, two different ones once each but in the same arm location). The brass gears just shed teeth for some reason....

What confuses me is the Double -D joint is PERFECT?!?!?!

At a sunday scrimmage we noticed that the center gear on the early stages is the same as the brass gears and is pressed into that plate. We popped them out from 4 plates (we bought lots of spares) and machined them down (took about an hour) with the help of team 207 (their shop) and a local professor. We have ran these in the final stage of the problem gearbox through rigorous PID loop testing (I cringe every time our programmers test that thing.... shock load after shock load...).

We also noticed a FP motor in a stock 256:1 draws ~1.3 amps of current. The one with the new steel gears draws 1.0!

EDIT: looking at the motor stats, 1.0 seems unrealistic for a FP. but the fact that both gearboxes were tested on the same setup shows the steal gears run better, even though the actual draw may be inaccurate.

So far we have shown no signs of wear on any part on the inside, nor the double-d joint.