pic: Battery connector.....

[EricH]

Originally Posted by MrBasse

Last year we ran our robot for hours and never melted a connector, the year before the same, the year before the same. Thousands of other teams have done the same (though maybe they are all being oddly quiet about this). It's not an attack at you, just a sign that something you are doing isn't quite jiving with the required components. The downside is that this problem creates a very unsafe condition.

If I may ask: How many motors are you guys running at a time? 4 CIMs? 6? A couple of window motors? A compressor? And how long at a time? 2.5 minutes? An hour? 6 hours?

See, here's the thing. Sure, hundreds of teams may have run their robot for hours over the season last year. But there are teams who will literally stop driving around only to change or charge the battery in any given multi-hour session. These teams may have 6 CIMS, a pair of MiniCIMs and a pack of other motors of the 550 and 775 varieties, plus the compressor, active at the same time, for much if not all of that time. That's one large amount of current potentially being pulled. Now, I haven't heard of any failures locally, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening--or not at the edge of happening. (The other possible explanation is that the connectors are wearing out due to fatigue/heating of the area around them, then not seating properly and adding a spark to the mix--then they melt, then they burn.)

And I'm pretty sure the Bees tend to run on the high end of both total run time, and time in a session, as well as lots of motors, and they tend to run enclosed bots, which will get some heat build up inside. If you're running on the low end of all of those with an open bot, you probably won't see anything similar.