VEXPro 2014: After The Season

[Trent B]

Originally Posted by R.C.

The solution for us was to make the shaft out of 4340 steel and harden it to 50c. Never had to change it after that.

Yeah, I was gonna suggest they make one out of 4340 or tool steel, something that is easy to harden heavily. Makes me think of the plates we were making to hold back the gas shocks last year, I think I had some of those parts upwards of 60C.

[Dunngeon]

Originally Posted by Trent B

Neutrino remade the shaft in mild steel as well as in stainless (I think 300 series). Both still had significant wear from the balls.

We are thinking of making a hardened tool steel shaft for off seasons, but that may just transfer the wear to the gears instead of the shaft.

I know Team Mean Machine made a custom ball shifter this year with completely hardened components for their shooter. The previous steel shaft had been damaged by the bearings when under shift + high tension. I don't have any up close photos of the shifter, but it's what they used to winch the punch back.

[cbale2000]

3-CIM Ball Shifters:

• Worked flawlessly, no issues at all during competition
• Shifts great, even when stopped or under load
• Changing out the shift spread was a bit of a pain since the small "C-clips" on the shifter shaft had to be removed before being able to take the old spread out (glad we did this between events and not during one).
• Face-mounting the gearbox with the 3rd stage required us to make some custom hollow hex spacers to allow us to attach the gearbox at the top in addition to bottom (we ended up just cutting some AM Churro to the right length but it would have been nice if something had been included).

VexPro Gears:

• We used Vexpro gears extensively this year in our drive system, and we never had to do maintenance on it all season.
• After 3 events and cleaning off a big of dirt, they still look brand new.

VersaPlanetary Gearboxes (with 1/2in Hex Output):

• Small, light, worked great.
• Adapting them to work with CIMs/MiniCIMs is a bit of a pain, I hope VEX comes up with a good solution because these gearboxes really do work great with those motors.
• I was disappointed when THIS happened during a motor replacement.

4" Traction Wheels (1.5" wide config):

• Great weight savings, especially compared to AM performance wheels we've used in the past.
• The adjustable width is a great feature
• It's difficult to find pop rivets that are long enough and have large enough heads to attach the tread.
• The 1.5" wide VexPro traction tread came a little over-sized and had to be cut down to be useable on the wheels.
• The VersaKey/Hub system worked great! It even allowed the wheels to drive when all the screws had come out of the gears powering them (we forgot to loctite).

BAG Motors:

• Pretty powerful for such a small package
• DO NOT let them stall, even for a moment, they WILL burn out (they do make an interesting "Burnt Marshmallow" smell though). We replaced about 3 of them on our shooters "Choo Choo" before swapping out to the more powerful RS775 motor.
• Cooling fans are a must for these if under heavy use, they can get "burn your hand" hot if you're not careful.

This was our first year using VexPro products and I will say overall I am very impressed by the quality of their products. Will definitely be coming back next year.

[Travis Hoffman]

10:1 VersaPlanetary + BAG Motor

Used the original VP with a welded polycord belt clutch drive (belt slips when ball acquired) in our roller claw. Didn't even have to attend to it once all year.

VEXPro Hex Shaft

Worked very well - held up all season in our drivetrain - very easy to swap wheels - no need to file the shafts to fit.

WCP Colson Wheel Hubs

Used four 4" dia. Colson wheels on the corner shafts of our 6WD West Coast setup. Hubs were bulletproof and Colsons barely wore down. Paired with 2 4" dia. custom 1.5" wide performance wheels with blue nitrile on the center shafts, had zero issues laying down defense or setting hard picks, and we maintained supreme maneuverability in high gear.

WCP 3-CIM WCD Dual Speed Shifters

Due to the initially confusing assembly instructions (which I expect will improve), it took longer to put these together than I would have liked, but once assembled, dry-lubed, and installed, these were just as bulletproof as the AndyMark offerings - it's good to have so many quality suppliers! This was the first year running a 6-CIM drivetrain, and these gearboxes put the power to the ground without a peep.

I will say that at least one of the sideplates had motor mount double holes that didn't exactly line up with the CIM holes. It took some coercion to get the CIM's to mount right. We put these on the practice bot. No issues, but not exactly comforting.

The plastic couplers used to mate the shifter cylinder to the dog shifting rod could also use some work to mesh all components together more happily. Hard to fit everything together and get the coupler screws screwed down properly, even when following the instructions.

[M. Mellott]

VEXPro Hex Shafts

Worked very well--no issues, and NO FILING!

3-CIM Ball Shifters

First time using a non-dog-gear-shifting transmission. They went together very easily. We used the outer plate to face mount the assembly to the inside of our 2x1 base frame, and then mounted a 35S double sprocket between the two aluminum plates. Due to the lack of space, we had to get creative and make our own spacers for between the transmission case and outer WCD plate. The mount never budged all season, but it would have been nice to have spacers included that could have been sized for a double sprocket, or extra-long ones that could be cut to length. As mentioned in another post, I didn't understand the non-symmetric mounting holes--this needs to be changed.

Overall performance-wise, we never had an issue. As the lowest-costing of the WCD 3-CIM transmission options, I'll definitely look to them as an option for next year.

10:1 VersaPlanetary + 1/2in Hex Output + BAG Motor

Small, light, solid, 1/2 hex shaft--love 'em.

With everything made of quality material, though, they need to have the motor plates made out of something more durable than plastic. The BAG Motor was tapped during some rough defense against us, and the plastic motor plate shattered, shearing off the motor and bending the BAG output shaft. I would also like to be able to buy that replacement motor mounting plate without having to buy 3 others that I don't need.

[Jared]

Aluminum Gears
We saw little to no wear on all our gears on our final transmission. I'm not sure why the bearing pocket on the dog gears doesn't let the bearing go all the way through. We noticed wear because the bearing and the gear had some slop and could wiggle a little. We got rid of this problem by cutting the dog pockets and a bearing bore that went .250 into the gear so that the bearing was more centered on the gear.

Having the .500 hex in the gear is really useful, as well as the little hub around it that is smaller than the diameter of the inner race of the bearings, which removes the need for a little spacer.

#25 Chain and Sprockets
The aluminum sprockets were surprisingly strong and showed no wear after many hours of practice driving. The #25 chain seems to be a little different from normal chain. The pitch is still .250, but it seems to be a bit stronger, and requires a "Heavy Duty" master link.

Shafts
The .500 aluminum hex shaft is the perfect size to fit into vex pro hex bearings and gears. It's a sloppy fit with the andymark gears and hex bearings, which we measured to be .512. We purchased the longer length of the shaft (maybe 18" ?), and it wasn't at all straight. We ended up not using most of the shaft and just taking the straight sections.

Bearings
They're all very cheap, but the hex bearings aren't as perfect as the round ones. They don't spin as freely, and they aren't all perfectly concentric. Some are a lot better than others. They work, but when possible, we plan on turning down the shaft and using a round bearing so that we can get a tighter fit.

Shifting Dog
We didn't use one this year, but we love the design. The part with the 4-40 threaded hole is thicker, which should make the dog stronger. We didn't use vex pro's dog, and our failure was cracking at the threaded hole.

[Oblarg]

WCP 3CIM SS Gearbox:

Almost a great product, but unlike AndyMark gearboxes it did not ship with loctited bolts to hold the CIMs on, and the access to the bolts holding on the bottom two CIMs was terrible (unless you took the gearbox apart, but that wasn't feasible on our robot). Combination of these two factors meant that we had a couple of bolts walk out, hindering our drive for a couple matches and forcing us to spend an ungodly amount of time trying to get the bolt back in place (we ultimately had to cut the end off of an allen wrench specifically to service the gearboxes).

I realize part of this was user error, but it's something that could be improved, regardless.

[T^2]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

WCP 3CIM SS Gearbox:

Almost a great product, but unlike AndyMark gearboxes it did not ship with loctited bolts to hold the CIMs on, and the access to the bolts holding on the bottom two CIMs was terrible (unless you took the gearbox apart, but that wasn't feasible on our robot). Combination of these two factors meant that we had a couple of bolts walk out, hindering our drive for a couple matches and forcing us to spend an ungodly amount of time trying to get the bolt back in place (we ultimately had to cut the end off of an allen wrench specifically to service the gearboxes).

I realize part of this was user error, but it's something that could be improved, regardless.

I believe all VEXPro products, including those under WCP, require the user to provide Loctite when specified.

[Grant Cox]

Hi all, thanks for the constructive feedback posted thus far in the thread.

Last year, VEXpro released a survey looking for customer feedback from the 2013 season. That feedback directly influenced our product development / improvement processes for the 2014 launch, and we'd like to reach out to the community once more now that you've had even more time to play with our products.

Please visit the form here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-iP...PUw14/viewform

Of course, feel free to share this link with other teams, team leaders, etc. We'll see you again next year!

[electroken]

Originally Posted by compwiztobe

The plastic encoder gear on one of our 4 units did end up losing its press fit over time, so a keyed shaft may be worth considering. Super glue would also work just fine.

This happened to us too, and it cost us some autonomous points until we figured out what had gone wrong.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Grant Cox

Hi all, thanks for the constructive feedback posted thus far in the thread.

Last year, VEXpro released a survey looking for customer feedback from the 2013 season. That feedback directly influenced our product development / improvement processes for the 2014 launch, and we'd like to reach out to the community once more now that you've had even more time to play with our products.

Please visit the form here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-iP...PUw14/viewform

Of course, feel free to share this link with other teams, team leaders, etc. We'll see you again next year!

Thank you for providing a direct line of input for the community to provide feedback. It's been great seeing the VexPro line introduced and improved for the last two years.

[Aren_Hill]

Originally Posted by electroken

This happened to us too, and it cost us some autonomous points until we figured out what had gone wrong.

One option you had was to Email me and I would've sent a set with a much tighter press to you free of charge, since you ordered the gearbox.


-Aren

[aldaeron]

All the stuff we used was great as has already been praised for its ease of use.

I am hoping for an earlier release for new parts to allow some time pre-season to test parts (September release instead of December). Maybe even a raffle for teams to beta test (free testing and marketing!)???

What I am most interested to know is whether or not there will be a new VEX motor controller this year? Perhaps even a dual or triple motor controller (one unit with a single PWM input and three input/output pairs so that 1 controller is used for 1 transmission). I realize carrying single, double and triple motor controllers is an inventory nightmare, but perhaps there will be a clever modular motor controller design to allow efficient packing and heatsinking of multiple motor controllers. As FRC keeps allowing more and more actuators, getting all the controllers laid out becomes a non trivial problem.

Keep up the great work!

-matto-

[Adam Freeman]

This year we used numerous VEX Pro products on our robot.

3CIM Ball Shifter: We ran them for 4 events with 3 CIMs and at Champs with 2CIM + 1 miniCIM. We were able to swap in miniCIMs on Wednesday of Champs with no issues. We actually shifted the ball shifters this season with pancake cylinders (I believe supplied from 2013 2CIM Ball Shifters). No issues with reliability or durability. We did have to request the tighter press encoder gears, b/c the original equipment encoder gears were slipping on all (4) of our gearboxes (practice and competition). In my opinion the lightweight, gearing options, and ease of maintenence will make these our gearbox of choice heading into 2015.

Versaplanetary Gearboxs: We ran (5) VP planetary gearboxes. (2) @ 100:1 on the shooter angle adjustment w/RS775, (2) @ 5:1 on the shooter pull back carriage w/RS775, and (1) on the intake at 10:1 w/BAG motor. These are my favorite utility gearboxes offered on the market. Outside some hole alignment issues we already coomunicated to VEX Pro, the only issues we had were the pins on the 10:1 gearboxes walking out of their holes. We had to pull the gearboxes once/event and put in new 10:1 plates with the pins locktited and re-pressed into the holes. These were always the highest loaded stage in the gearbox (last stage before the motor?). I assume we are overloading the 10:1 plates at that stage through the amount of usage we put on that shooter arm.

Various belts and pulleys: Drivetrain was 100% VP 24T and 42T pulleys. Originally started with 9mm belts all around. Prior to competition season we switched to McMaster Kevlar re-enforced 15mm belts on the center wheels. All belt lengths were calculated using the WCP belt calculator. During practice we were getting some belt rachetting and snapped one 9mm belt after a wheel change. We couldn't determine exactly why the belt snapped, but felt more comfortable switching to the wider re-enforced belts. Overall we were extremely happy with the drivetrain performance over our traditional chain drive, and will probably be running a similar setup next year.

Intake was also run with VP belts and pulleys (18, 24, & 30T pulleys). Our intake took a major beating and never once did we have any issues with driving the intake or alignment of the belts or pulleys. Needless to say, I am a fan of more belt and pulley options.

VersaWheels and Hubs: We started with 4" Versa DTs all around on an 8WD chassis. We were not getting the turning performance we wanted during practice and testing, so we switched to the W pattern wheels on the inner 4 to reduce the lateral friction, while keeping good fore-aft traction. We got about a 1.5 competitions/wheel set on the Ws. They were worn down pretty far, but we are happy with the performance to wear characteristics of these wheels. The DTs seemed to appear worn quite a bit faster but still held decent subjective performance. Overall the VersaHub system made setup and wheel swapping very easy for us.

We might be channelling our inner Killer Bee and trying some 4" omnis on our drive this summer. I'm sure they will be just as easy to swap in.

Overall we are very happy with the quality of products, ease of ordering, purchasing, service, etc. available from VEXPro this season.

I'd personally love to see a servo, motor, or electric actuator setup for the ball shifters for years we aren't using pneumatics, but I'm not sure we haven't switched to the dark side from now on. Obviously not an easy thing to do, or they would have already done it.

Keep up the great work!

-Adam

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

Versaplanetary Gearboxs: We ran (5) VP planetary gearboxes. (2) @ 100:1 on the shooter angle adjustment w/RS775, (2) @ 5:1 on the shooter pull back carriage w/RS775, and (1) on the intake at 10:1 w/BAG motor. These are my favorite utility gearboxes offered on the market. Outside some hole alignment issues we already coomunicated to VEX Pro, the only issues we had were the pins on the 10:1 gearboxes walking out of their holes. We had to pull the gearboxes once/event and put in new 10:1 plates with the pins locktited and re-pressed into the holes. These were always the highest loaded stage in the gearbox (last stage before the motor?). I assume we are overloading the 10:1 plates at that stage through the amount of usage we put on that shooter arm.

I forgot to mention in my post but we too experienced problems with our 10:1 stacks with the pins coming out on our 100:1, 10:1, and 40:1 gearboxes (pickup pivot, shooter winch, and pickup roller). Our original thought was they were from last years batch as we inventoried our supply and ordered what we needed as it was cheaper than buying all new complete gearboxes so we thought it was our fault either in testing, storage, or something else. We ordered all new 10:1 stacks between our first and second district events and haven't had an issue since.

It could be how we used them but it happened on our 40:1 pickup roller which I don't believe we ever stalled or abused in a match.