Quote:
Originally Posted by Rapt0r9
Well, I was considering setting up a relay to select which motor the victor would be assigned to. By using a spike, we can cut the number of victors that we need in half, thus helping to reduce the weight of the robot. The spike can also serve as protection to prevent both victors from outputting voltage to the motor at once.
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A few things will get in your way on this implementation. The first and foremost, the Spike is only rated for 20 amps. This rating is determined not only by the fuse but by the ratings of the contacts used on the internal relays. If allowed under the rules (and I do not believe under the current rulebook this would be allowed) a stalled FP, or Chalupa motor would turn a Spike into ash in a matter of a few minutes. Certain failure modes of the Victors would produce a dead short on the output, so just wiring in parallel would also cause more harm than good. Finally, custom circuits (i.e. a high current relay) are not allowed, under the rules, to be placed between the Victor and motor nor is a custom circuit allowed to directly control a motor.
Some teams have problems with Victors yet most do not. I could spend a few hours talking about Victor failures but essentially all failures can be reduced to just two causes. 1. Foreign material in the Victor causes internal shorts. Keep metal shavings, gear debris and drill dust out of electronics. 2. Excessive and repeated currents at 100 amps or above caused by drive train design, loose or intermittant elctrical connections, lack of calibration in multimotor systems and improper driving technique. This abuse causes extreme internal heat in the active devices resulting in electrical failure.
I would spend more time trying to deduce which failure mode is causing your Victors to die and correct the problem at the beginning of robot construction. If you have a correctable problem and ignore it, you will reach a point where your backup to the backup will also fail leaving you with a non-functional robot. Murphy says this will occur in the last match on Einstein on Saturday afternoon. I would rather have a functional robot and a medal than three dead Victors.