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View Poll Results: Use it or not
Yes 84 87.50%
No 12 12.50%
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Unread 11-12-2012, 07:38
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

For the First Community, Christmas came early this year. We have lots of new toys to play with. However, Be assured that We are one of the best destructive product testing groups around. Our new toys have had some testing but, have yet to see the abuse of a full season. If there are any weaknesses we will find them. Even if these products are perfectly designed there could be production defects waiting to be discovered. There no doubt will be a problem hear and there. Hopefully no disasters. Please, if a team does have a problem try and collect as much information on the problem and contact the vendor. Work with them. In the past There has been allot of venomous flaming of vendors who have had product problems. Please maintain professionalism.
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Unread 11-12-2012, 10:02
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

FRC competitions are technical design challenges. With respect to COTS, the process boils down choosing the right product to meet specific design requirements. IFI has simply given the community another source, yet it's an untested source. It's really a tradeoff of cost vs risk of unknown quality, tbh. Some items are less risky (to my team, at least), so those are definitely under consideration. Others, maybe next year.
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Unread 11-12-2012, 15:18
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

I have ordered some of the gears to test what VEX is calling a teflon infused ceramic coating, not to be confused with Anodizing.

Anodizing is utilized to produce a layer of Aluminum oxide within the original base material. Anodizing is a inclusive coating rather than additive , like paint. The controlled formation of the oxide produces a much harder, corrosion resistant surface than the origial base material. The oxide thickness in a Black Anodized part is typically .0005-.0008 inches thick. The oxide structure is comprised of millions of pores per square inch of material. These pores are what allow the dyes to absorb into the coating usually followed by a Nickel sealer. There are also Hard coat Anodizing processes that produce very hard wear resistant surfaces.

Teflon infused ceramic coatings are very hard wear resistant coatings. These additive coatings are typically used and very harsh abusive environments. These coatings are significantly harder than Anodized Aluminum. Generally these coatings are thermally applied thru use of flame or plasma operations. There are wet application processes with 700F cure temperatures that produce an advertised ceramic coating.

I will report my results.
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Unread 11-12-2012, 16:20
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

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Originally Posted by DMike View Post
I have ordered some of the gears to test what VEX is calling a teflon infused ceramic coating, not to be confused with Anodizing.
It sounds like they're using ordinary Teflon-impregnated anodizing. Aluminum oxide, (a.k.a. alumina, Al2O3, carborundum or sapphire) is a ceramic, although it is somewhat unconventional to describe it as such in these circumstances.

I doubt very much that they're using a flame-sprayed ceramic coating. (What would be the point, and how do you apply Teflon at those temperatures?)

Interestingly, they're apparently applying the coating after machining, given the claims of reduced friction (application after machining also tends to contraindicate a flame-sprayed ceramic in this application). Most high-quality anodized aluminum gears are made from 2024, and anodized before the teeth and bores are finished (i.e. the cut teeth are bare metal).
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Unread 11-12-2012, 16:27
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

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Originally Posted by Tristan Lall View Post
It sounds like they're using ordinary Teflon-impregnated anodizing. Aluminum oxide, (a.k.a. alumina, Al2O3, carborundum or sapphire) is a ceramic, although it is somewhat unconventional to describe it as such in these circumstances.

I doubt very much that they're using a flame-sprayed ceramic coating. (What would be the point, and how do you apply Teflon at those temperatures?)

Interestingly, they're apparently applying the coating after machining, given the claims of reduced friction (application after machining also tends to contraindicate a flame-sprayed ceramic in this application). Most high-quality anodized aluminum gears are made from 2024, and anodized before the teeth and bores are finished (i.e. the cut teeth are bare metal).
JVN was joking.....read above...
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  #21   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 11-12-2012, 16:34
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

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Originally Posted by Bob Steele View Post
JVN was joking.....read above...
I read that as joking about the idea that a black anodized sprocket exhibits "superior performance" w/r/t a plain-finish sprocket.

DMike was talking about the coating on the gears, which isn't described as anodization, but probably is. Its claim to fame is the inclusion of Teflon in the process, which would only be a sensible thing to include if it actually provides superior performance.
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Unread 11-12-2012, 16:50
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tristan Lall View Post
Most high-quality anodized aluminum gears are made from 2024, and anodized before the teeth and bores are finished (i.e. the cut teeth are bare metal).
Are you sure about that? I don't have any specific knowledge, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me from a mechanical standpoint. I mean, the anodizing process doesn't care about surface geometries, so anodizing before or after wouldn't be too much different. And having a bare aluminum-aluminum wear surface sounds like a rather poor idea to me, what with aluminum's propensity for galling and all that.
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Unread 11-12-2012, 17:12
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

Most Aluminum materials that we deal with here that are required for applications such as gears would be made from 6XXX or 7XXX Aluminum.

MIL-8625 T2-C2 Anodizing is a general use dyed Sulphuric anodize process. Anodizing being inclusive does not change dimensions of a machined part until you strip the coating off.

Anodizing being an electrochemical process is subject to all the same current density pitfalls as any other electroplating process. You will have a thicker coating in the highs and thinner in the lows. In the case of a gear the top of the tooth would be high current the ID bore would be low.

This info is just basic stuff. Finishes are engineered just like material choice, many times they go hand in hand.

Take this info for what you may, it never hurts to learn a little.
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Unread 11-12-2012, 17:16
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

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Originally Posted by sdcantrell56 View Post
I'd love to know how a superficial layer of black oxidation increases performance...
In the sailboat racing world, anything painted orange must be fast. By definition.

Likewise, in the robot world, anything that is either blue or black is better. By definition.

On a more serious note, we had a team meeting to discuss whether or not we should buy vex-pro (limited budget etc). We're buying a couple components to test. We're hoping to have them before kickoff, but seeing how nothing guarantees it, we'll see what happens.

We always know that if we are unhappy with the VexPro quality (which would be VERY unexpected) or can't get parts fast enough, we can always get what we need at AndyMark.

Last edited by Tom Line : 11-12-2012 at 17:20.
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Unread 11-12-2012, 17:43
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

My team is looking specifically into the omni-wheels. Being a 3rd year team, we figure we might as well start planning for the future, even if we don't use them this year. Which means gears, Versahubs, and maybe a fresh CIM or two, but remember you can('t) have too many cims!
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Unread 11-12-2012, 18:06
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

We're ordering the mecanum wheels to test out with our octocanum drive, but have plug-n-play modularity with AM HD mecanum wheels just in case -- the HD mecanum wheels from AM are just plain beastly in terms of durability and reliability. If all goes well, we'll abuse the living heck out of a set of VEXPro wheels within a few weeks of acquiring them and will have something to report to the rest of y'all.
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Unread 11-12-2012, 18:48
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

The Ceramic Coating as we describe it is based on the MIL spec hard coat anodizing process. There are a few tweaks to the chemistry (including flouropolomers, aka Teflon, and others) with more ceramic like properties. We selected the material because of the years of testing and actual industrial use while I was at FANUC Robotics. It is similar the base hard coat process, but just some extra tweaks.

When we switched to this material for all of our aluminum wear parts, it eliminated a lot of the problems we were having with other processes (hard chrome, electroless nickel, to name a few).

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Unread 11-12-2012, 22:52
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

Nice, Mil-8625 TIII Hardcoat with PTFE. The coating produced is in the 60-70 Rc range. Mil spec Hard Chrome is 72 Rc hardness, generally ceramics, i think range in the 60-70 Rc These gears should be bullet proof, can't wait to check them out. The price is almost worth the coating alone, in the scheme of Anodizing this is near the top. Very cool stuff and Black too.
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Unread 12-12-2012, 01:31
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik View Post
Are you sure about that? I don't have any specific knowledge, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me from a mechanical standpoint. I mean, the anodizing process doesn't care about surface geometries, so anodizing before or after wouldn't be too much different. And having a bare aluminum-aluminum wear surface sounds like a rather poor idea to me, what with aluminum's propensity for galling and all that.
I'm basing that mainly on the high-quality fine-pitch aluminum gears available from SDP/SI and PIC Design, and those gears I've observed in random precision machinery. (So "most" isn't strictly the right descriptor—more like "most of the ones I've encountered".) Those ones are quite noticeably machined after anodizing (plus it says so in the catalogue).

As for galling, in a normal atmosphere that will oxidize the bare surface, at least there's some protection. I don't know if the tooth-to-tooth contact stresses are high enough to break through the natural layer of oxide and promote galling.
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Unread 12-12-2012, 02:45
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Re: VEX PRO. To use it or not to use it.

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Originally Posted by Tristan Lall View Post
I'm basing that mainly on the high-quality fine-pitch aluminum gears available from SDP/SI and PIC Design, and those gears I've observed in random precision machinery. (So "most" isn't strictly the right descriptor—more like "most of the ones I've encountered".) Those ones are quite noticeably machined after anodizing (plus it says so in the catalogue).

As for galling, in a normal atmosphere that will oxidize the bare surface, at least there's some protection. I don't know if the tooth-to-tooth contact stresses are high enough to break through the natural layer of oxide and promote galling.
So...it's a cosmetic surface finish?

I don't understand why you'd anodize the gear if you're going to machine it away at the only point where it matters.
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