Quote:
Originally Posted by StevenB
Team 34, that is a beautiful and impressive drivetrain. Out of curiosity, why did you choose to go with a differential rather than have one motor for each side and vary their speeds as you turn? It seems to me that if you lose traction on one wheel, you lose about half your power either way.
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1. We don't believe there is a great need for 'brute force' this year. One two speed gearbox should do it. High speed for getting around the track in a hurry, and low speed for pushing our way out of a jam. We have plenty of speed and power in high to move out in a hurry and the CG is so low we can take a corner at full speed. The turn radius is about 3 feet.
2. Our system utilizes a clutch to provide torque transfer in the event of one wheel loosing traction. That metalic device just behind the blue diff is an adjustable clutch. We can adjust this clutch to whatever torque we want so we have in effect created a "Limited-Slip" differential system. In general, we set the torque high enough so we can still move in the event one wheel looses traction but not so high that the rear axle acts as a solid axle during cornering.
3. Weight. It weights less than a system that has independent gear boxes. We wanted to be sure that we had weight to use for our lift. As it turns out, the base you see pictured weighs only 42 lbs which gave us plenty of room for lift development. The whole robot only weights less than 100 lbs.
4. We wanted to use a CIM on our lift and I'm glad we did. It's ultra fast and smooth as silk.
5. Simple. It looks complex but this thing is actually easy to maintain. The software was easy, it avoids any issue with two gearboxes stuck in an undesireable condition, and it's layed out well.