Shooter burning motors...but why?

[ToddF]

We lost one of the RS-550 motors on our shooter, too. We have two driving a single shaft, and one of them started making funny buzzing noises. Upon close examination, we found that the plastic fan had become detached from the motor shaft, and was not providing full cooling. We don't know if this was the root cause of the overheating, or a symptom.

I should note that this was after several hours of intermittent running, calibrating the shooter speed to distance from basket, for our vision based shooter control. We replaced the motor, and placed a couple victor fans so they blow continuously over the exterior of the motor cases. Our motors stay cool now. Got to love forced convection.