Runaway CIM motors

[BullBot Mentor]

Hello,

We are a rookie team, with the CIM motors running our drive wheels. During our testing today, we ran into a problem. After moving our joystick to its maximum position, the motor stuck. We released the joystick and the motor continued at top speed. After disconnecting the PWM cable from the Jaguar, we powered the system up again and the motor continued to spin at top speed.

Every time we power up the system, the motors run at top speed.

Has anyone ran into this before?

Thanks for any feedback.

[adf0221]

can you post what code you are using? that could help us determine the problem!

[nitneylion452]

Are you using encoders?

[JamesCH95]

If you pulled the PWM cable it it still spins at full speed your motor controller is blown. Replace it ASAP. I have encountered this issue before.

[BullBot Mentor]

I was afraid of that. We had this problem on the first 2 Jags we burned up and I had the team replace all of the wiring and it looked like it was correct. We also were concerned about metal chips in the controllers, so I've been having them vaccum continuously.

Do you know what else could cause these controller failures?

Thanks for all of your feedback, we appreciate it.

[BullBot Mentor]

Originally Posted by nitneylion452

Are you using encoders?

Thank you for your response, we are not using encoders

[BullBot Mentor]

Originally Posted by adf0221

can you post what code you are using? that could help us determine the problem!

Thank you for your reply. Our programmer has the code, I will have her add it when we get back together this afternoon.
We disconnected the computer from the circuit to try to isolate the problem. Everything was running fine before the motor just took off and the only way to stop it was the circuit breaker. Luckily we had it up on blocks while we were working on it.

[MrForbes]

We use Victors to run the drivetrain motors, they seem to be less likely to fail in strange ways than the Jaguars. We've never had a Victor fail on a robot, but we've had a couple Jaguars fail the one year we used them for the drive motors.

Stories like this confirm that we're probably doing the right thing....even though many teams use Jags and don't have any problems...

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by squirrel

We use Victors to run the drivetrain motors, they seem to be less likely to fail in strange ways than the Jaguars. We've never had a Victor fail on a robot, but we've had a couple Jaguars fail the one year we used them for the drive motors.

Stories like this confirm that we're probably doing the right thing....even though many teams use Jags and don't have any problems...

I will second this, with the caveat that the black jaguars seem to be way better than the brown Jags. I don't think I've had a black Jaguar die yet *knock on wood*

[BullBot Mentor]

We will try to order another Victor and go with that. I am going to check the alignment of our drive wheels and chain to make sure we are not overloading the motor.

Thanks again.

[StevenB]

Just to second what's been said already: if you've pulled out the PWM cable, and the motor is still running, the problem is the speed controller. It can't be the code, it can't be the encoders*, it can't be the computer, it can't be the joystick, or anything else. If there isn't any signal going into the Jaguar, and it's still running, it's broken.

I don't know what your replacement plan is, but you probably don't want to run one side of your drivetrain with a Victor and one side with a Jaguar. They have slightly different input/output curves, so the motors will run at different speeds given the same input. It certainly won't break anything, but it will probably be harder to make your robot drive straight.

* If you're using CAN, there is a way to run the Jaguars with direct encoder feedback, which will allow the Jaguar to drive the motor without being sent a constant command. Even so, it still shouldn't run on startup.

[BullBot Mentor]

Thank you for your input,

We did order another Victor and plan to switch our drive motors to the Vics and our arm motor with the Jag. Without a "true root cause", we loosened the drive chains slightly to relieve some load on the motor. We had averything running OK yesterday, except for 1 side down without a controller. Our student morale picked up with the successes we did see and a game plan to get our new friend rolling.

Now, if we can just keep the jags from smoking...

[slijin]

Immediately check your robot for a chassis short.

Although Jaguars are a point of failure, applying 12V across drive motors will spin them, no matter where the source. Albeit unlikely, make sure that this is not the case.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Did a limit switch jumper on the Jaguar fall out? It is possible that the Jag is trying to get back from a limit condition. Full on is not the general failure on these devices. It happens but it is vary rare. If the PWM cable is left inserted and you disable the robot, does the motor continue to spin?

[BullBot Mentor]

I did take the Jaguar apart to inspect for damage and did not see any. I did not check to see if there was a misplaced jumper. Thank you for the advice.

We did disable the robot with the PWM cable removed and when enabled again, the motor took off.