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Unread 19-03-2002, 12:02
Joe Johnson's Avatar Unsung FIRST Hero
Joe Johnson Joe Johnson is offline
Engineer at Medrobotics
AKA: Dr. Joe
FRC #0088 (TJ2)
Team Role: Engineer
 
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60 Amp Breaker: Shocking News...

In the Elimination Rounds at the Buckeye Regional, a number of teams, including Chief Delphi, had problems with the 60 Amp circuit breaker tripping.

I have been one of the voices saying that teams should not have any problems so I am especially anxious to get the word out on this issue to set the record straight.

Here is my story:

I knew we should have been okay on that breaker. There is no way we pull more than an average 100 Amps during a match, no almost no matter what we are doing. The charts tell me at 100A the breaker should take 2 minutes to trip. Yet we were going dark about ½ way through the match! What gives?

I thought perhaps it was a bad breaker but tests on the breaker we took out of our machine (thinking it might be bad) showed that it did not trip in less than 2 minutes when we tested it at 100A constant.

Shock turned out to be the explanation. If we just tap the breaker on the side of the housing with the handle of a screw drive (and not too hard either), the break time is effectively cut in half. This was found to be true at several different test conditions.

When we reviewed the tapes of our matches, in every match that we tripped the breaker, the robot took a hit right at the moment the beacon went dead.

I think we have found the smoking gun...

Bottom line: Teams that can figure out a way to keep their breaker from getting an impact load may be able to extend the trip time of their breaker by a factor of 2.

This is a important bit of news that we plan on implementing at the Great Lakes Regional this week.

Stay tuned for more results as the story continues...

Joe J.

Last edited by Joe Johnson : 19-03-2002 at 13:26.
 


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